


Against Disaster

by gloss



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Brainwashing, But this is Finn/Poe at its heart, M/M, Pining, Poe's a disaster, Post-Torture Recovery, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secondary Pairings Romantic and Platonic, Self-Medication, Unrequited Crush, Unresolved Emotional Tension, or lack thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 11:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6904006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <cite>Not that he <b>loved</b> Finn. There was no way he could love someone he'd spoken to for all of ten minutes, no matter how lifechanging those minutes proved to be. </cite>
</p><p>
  <cite>He loved the feeling of it all.  The thrill, the novelty, the <b>rush</b>. Everything he'd shared with Finn had been more exciting than the rest of his life put together, and his life had been far from sedate.</cite>
</p><p><cite>That's what he told himself, anyway.</cite><br/>Poe's a disaster and Finn's still got a lot of brainwashing to work through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The pieces of my spirit strewn

**Author's Note:**

> Enormous thanks to some very wise and highly generous reader-editors: aphrodite_mine, who not only audienced early bits and shards _and_ provided characterization insight, but also then beta'd the whole final draft. Cicak also kindly beta'd the final draft, while Deputychairman reviewed an earlier draft.
> 
> One narrative thread was directly inspired by [this kinkmeme prompt](https://tfa-kink.dreamwidth.org/3961.html?thread=8381049#cmt8381049) about Finn's brainwashing and conditioning; this story goes in a different direction, however.
> 
> Work and chapter titles from Theodore Roethke, [Against Disaster](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=22207).
> 
> I'm on Tumblr [@spaceoperafeerie](http://spaceoperafeerie.tumblr.com/). Please come swoon over and/or yell at this ridiculous ship and movie with me?

Now I am out of element  
And far from anything my own,  
My sources drained of all content,  
The pieces of my spirit strewn.

All random, wasted, and dispersed,  
The particles of being lie;  
My special heaven is reversed,  
I move beneath an evil sky.

This flat land has become a pit  
Wherein I am beset by harm,  
The heart must rally to my wit  
And rout the specter of alarm.

* * *

Everyone survives, but in its death throes, the mutated duracrete slug manages to spew sick, stinging black slime all over them, head to toe. The strike team is quarantined in a warehouse until the med-techs and sci-droids can finish running all the necessary tests.

The slime burned right through flak vests and flight suits, even Finn's new, flexible armor, so they're stripped to skivvies. The five of them huddle in a corner, peeling off the now-stringy, sticky slime from each other as they pick increasingly dumb topics to debate in order to pass the time.

_Who Would Win: C-3P0 possessed by the ghost of a Sith Lord versus BB-8 possessed by a Jedi?_

Poe's position on this particular question is clear, so he concentrates on scraping off the rubbery bits of dried slime from the back of one of Finn's arms. He's leaning in against Finn's side, Finn's arm draped over his shoulder, working his thumbnail against the streaks. 

"When that's done, looks like he could use a hand with a bigger problem," Wexley says, pushing past Poe to grab another ration bar. "Way more rewarding one, too, right?"

Echoing Wexley's laugh and bobbing his head, Finn slaps Wexley's hand. Then, however, he looks at Poe with that particular calm but expectant expression that means, basically, _explain?_

It takes Poe, however, a second to understand. Finn shifts against him then, settling back against the wall, and with the change in angle, Poe can see that his drawers are tented. 

"Maybe later," Poe tells Wexley, rearranging Finn's arm so he can reach the last patch, right up against his arm pit. "You know, preferably when there's no ugly old perverts hanging around."

"Your call," Wexley says, spraying crumbs. "It's the gold asshole who'd win, by the way."

"You're such an imbecile," Poe tells him. "How do you even manage to remember to keep breathing?"

Wexley opens his mouth to show the chewed-up food, which is both disgusting and fairly representative of his debating skills.

Poe's been half-hard this whole time, a little aware of it, but distracted by actual, vital concerns like avoiding transdermal poisoning. Now that they know they're going to be all right, and he's this close to Finn, and can _see_ Finn's own response (if it is Poe he's responding to - that's always the uncertainty, isn't it?), he's getting warmer, firmer.

Honestly, even if it isn't Poe that Finn is responding to, Poe would like to help out. He's not sure how selfish that is.

When Finn gets up to dig out the holo card set that he swears he's seen somewhere back here, Poe follows him into the maze of cartons and pallets. 

"Snap's a dick," Poe tells him, squatting down next to Finn and pawing through a crate. "Don't pay any attention to him."

"He's all right," Finn says, because he's the nicest person Poe's ever met. "Just confused me, that's all."

"But, you know --" Poe bounces a little, suddenly, stupidly, slightly self-conscious. "If you do want some help, just say the word."

Finn turns to look at him. His eyes are wide, his face just blank. "You are helping. The cards are around here somewhere."

"No, I meant." Poe clears his throat. This is probably the sweetest brush-off he's ever gotten, so he's going to push it, because he has never, ever known when to leave well enough alone. "With the hard-on." He grins and hears how strained his voice is and just keeps going, cupping himself lightly, for half a second. "You're definitely not alone in that."

Finn scans his face. "What are you talking about?"

Poe elbows him lightly. "You know, the proximity. We could maybe do something about it. Together, more fun that way."

"More fun what way?"

"Relieving the tension."

Finn bites his lower lip from the inside and shakes his head slowly.

Poe adds, rushing, "It doesn't have to mean anything. I mean, if you --"

"You're not making any sense."

Poe stops smiling. He looks at Finn, sees him _see_ Poe check his crotch, then his own. The whole time, nothing changes on Finn's face. It isn't a rejection of Poe or his offer. It's bigger than that, and more complete. It's a negation of the whole topic, as if it simply doesn't exist.

Because it doesn't, not for Finn.

-

When Rey returns with the Jedi, there's no fanfare. The _Falcon_ splutters into local atmo, requests permission to land in Shyriiwook, and here they are.

Poe's with the general when the word comes in. She takes half a step backward, sways precisely twice, then tightens her jaw and excuses herself. Poe follows, not too closely, both curious and concerned. 

Finn's already at the airfield.

"Just had a feeling," he says by way of explanation, shrugging, squinting to see something, anything, in the cockpit.

When they come down the gangplank, willowy Rey, black-caped Jedi, then Wookiee and retro-cute droid, Poe feels everyone around him straining, taking in a breath, getting ready to shout. 

Finn takes off at a run, meeting Rey halfway in the trampled grass, hugging her without breaking his stride. Their expressions are radiant as they turn round and round and round again. 

The general and the Jedi cling to each other far more quietly, stock-still, heads bowed, foreheads pressed together.

Then the Wookiee takes a couple long loping steps and embraces Finn from behind, pulling him off his feet. Finn looks up and back, laughing.

A tiny, ugly thought uncoils in Poe's mind. It goes something like this: _no one's ever been that happy to see me_.

Except Finn, when they all got back from Takodana. That feels like half a lifetime ago already, nothing like this moment, hardly so significant.

And BB-8, always.

-

There is a very important, highly significant difference between "reckless" and "ingenious", but hell if Poe can remember it right now. 

The admiral called the move Poe just pulled over Byss's moon one of the two. He's lucky the X-Wing is basically in one piece and still flyable, that he's not severely concussed, that he's actually still here to be puzzling out that mysterious terminological difference.

BB-8 won't talk to him, however. He warned Poe, several times, about the inadvisable maneuvers and tactics. Since Poe didn't listen then, he is giving Poe the silent treatment now. 

Poe could not possibly care less at the moment. He's working on his fifth Rebel Alliance Ale in the busy spaceport city, he has two days' worth of unpaid disciplinary leave in front of him, and he _did_ manage to take out an entire First Order armory frigate single-handed.

The adrenaline of several close calls in rapid succession still pounds and twangs in his system, despite all the ale. All _that's_ doing is making him need to piss. Stupid brand name, should have called it Palpatine's Catheter.

He gets to his feet, rakes a hand through his hair, and looks around for BB-8 so he can save Poe's seat.

Right, he's solo tonight.

Not _solo_ , that's wrong. He's not _dead_. He's alone.

The wall tilts to meet him. Maybe he is a little concussed.

-

Rey finds him the same way she does everything: neatly, quietly, subtly. 

One moment he's pacing around the ship doing a second visual inspection and checking off maintenance records, the next she's standing in front of him.

There are ghosts who make more noise.

"That was a risky maneuver," she says. 

"Hello," he replies. "How are you? I'm fine. The weather is lovely. What can I do for you, Rey? Oh, nothing, Poe, I just wanted to tell you that sure was a risky --"

"That was a risky maneuver, yes, I know. I just said that." 

She's as strong and imperturbable as a river's current. He feels stupid right now. He's sick of feeling stupid. He's been back from Byss and disciplinary leave for little more than a day. The time off was supposed to help him "clear his head" and "get his shit together", but all it did was make him jittery and anxious to be back in the air.

Poe pinches the bridge of his nose, where the last of his hangover has taken up residence. More gently, he says, "Which maneuver?"

"With the armory frigate," she says. "How did you know it would work?"

He leans against the fuselage and crosses one leg over the other. "Didn't. Had to try."

Rey nods. She's so much like Finn that way -- they accept what you tell them. They might not agree, but they also don't play any games of oneupsmanship. Conversations with them are straightforward, almost poetic, affairs. There isn't any dejarik-like showiness, no sparring and teasing, dancing to and fro. Just open hearts and quiet minds.

No wonder he feels so awful lately. These days, he's got a locked-up heart and loud, blustering mind.

He opens his fists and flexes his fingers. "Did you want details? My flight recorder, maybe?"

"No, thank you." Rey turns to go. 

Feeling like a heel, Poe pushes off from the fuselage, reaching for her shoulder. Without looking, she knocks his wrist back to his side, then slips right into a defensive stance. 

Fire forks up his arm, hot then numb; Poe cradles his wrist with his other hand, peering at her, confused. 

"Whoa," he says. His headache flares up inside his skull; his eyes water. "Um. Sorry."

She loosens her stance and lifts her chin. "Sorry."

He thinks that might be the first lie she's ever told. At least since she got here.

-

"So you're a Jedi now, too?" Poe asks when Finn asks him if he wants to spar with lightsabers. 

Finn laughs. "No way! But it's a great weapon, really elegant, and --"

"Where's Rey?"

He settles down. "Meditating, I think? Off with Luke, anyway, doing magic stuff." He sits heavily on the edge of Poe's bunk, crowding Poe's legs out of the way. No sense of personal space with either of them. "Didn't say when they'd be back."

"Sorry, buddy," Poe says and almost means it. "Sucks."

-

When he actually thinks it through, Poe realizes that he's the only one from his Academy cohort who's still alive. Maybe some of the ones who went into mercantile shipping and freight are still around, somewhere, but as far as he can figure, everyone who joined the Republic _or_ the Resistance corps is gone. Who knows about the Order; he just hopes those fuckers died painfully.

This rate of attrition doesn't seem possible. He asks BB-8 to check the records, both civil and military. Then he has to ask, a few times, if he's found the answer before BB-8 will confirm.

BB-8 is a lot like Poe; neither of them likes bad news. They'll both do everything they can, more, to ensure it never comes to pass or has to be shared.

-

When Poe finally does start to understand what's going on with Finn, he feels like the biggest asshole in this or any other galaxy.

What's worse is that he doesn't even do most of the work himself. It's not until Rey says, off-handedly one morning while they're repairing some landing gear, "He's doing a lot better. Eye contact and everything."

"What're you talking about?" He accepts the UV rag she's passing him, but he's watching Finn amble away through the hangar.

"Finn," she replies, bent back over the pressure-sensor panel.

"I know, but what're you talking about eye contact?"

She flicks her gaze over to him, then back to what she's doing. She's got three screws in her mouth now, and the _don't fuck with me while I'm wiring_ expression on her face, so he raises his hands and backs away.

Poe circles the shuttle and hauls himself up into its cargo bay to check out the air locks on its doors.

"He never made eye contact with officers," she says, appearing at his side in that uncanny way. She tears off a double-big bite of ration bar and chews. "They conditioned him not to."

"He makes eye contact with me," Poe says. He's caught off-guard, honestly, and feels kind of cranky about this. How had he never noticed this? He'd like to think he notices _everything_ about Finn. "Always did."

He knows that for the very simple reason that Finn has great eyes, expressive and bright. But Rey doesn't need to know his very high, incredibly moony opinion of Finn's eyes. She probably already does know that, but he'd like to preserve the illusion that he's not a completely open book.

She rolls her eyes. "Well, of course, _you_."

He's about to ask what that's supposed to mean when she adds, "But not other officers, especially superiors. Never used to."

-

That's when Poe really starts noticing things and putting them together. Finn _does_ look at the ground when Leia or Statura passes; if they speak to him, he can look up, but his jaw is locked. His hands find their way behind his back, curled into fists.

He also always has his back to the wall, wherever they are. If they're out in the open, he keeps moving in a rhomboid pattern, scanning constantly.

"Hey," Poe says once when they're hiking back from the far hangar and Finn is doing exactly that. "You okay?"

"Hm? Great, I'm great." Finn truly seems to believe that; he grins, wide and easy, and knocks Poe's shoulder as he shifts into the next angle of his rhombus. "Why?"

"Seem a little antsy," Poe says. "I wanted to check."

"Nah," Finn says. "Feel fine."

"Good, good." Poe considers getting in Finn's way, maybe cutting him off when he pivots to the next angle, but he can't. That would be cruel.

-

"Hell of a pilot," the Jedi says one night. It's quite late, and Poe is the last of the stragglers to make it in from recon. He's _tired_. But here's a living legend wrapped in black, stroking his beard and talking to him.

"Thanks, man." Poe stows away his helmet and flak vest, then sinks down on a de-commissioned astromech to pull off his boots. "What brings you out here so late?"

Skywalker might be smiling at that, but his face is so shadowed, plus bearded, that it's very hard to read. 

Maybe Poe should grow out his beard. Get that much more armor between him and the world.

"Luke," he says, sinking to a crouch next to Poe and reaching over to shake his hand. His grip is strong and warm, and it takes Poe half a moment to remember to let go.

"Poe."

He ducks his head. "I know."

Well, that's interesting, maybe. 

Then again, it's a small base. A lot of the older generation remembers his mother, probably much better than Poe himself does.

"Right," Poe says. He rubs his palms up and down his thighs; fidgetiness is clashing with exhaustion and leaving him thick-headed. "So."

When Poe was seven or eight, he wanted, more than anything, to be a Jedi. He'd been watching too many holo-dramas and made his parents tell him every story they'd ever heard about the order, every memory they had of Skywalker himself. He got hopped up on the idea of having a laser sword and travelling with your best friend, who was sometimes his dad, sometimes Rima Lobin from next door, righting wrongs, helping the helpless, and solving problems. Generally setting the world back right.

He stopped thinking about that kind of stuff after his mom died.

Now when he thinks of something like that, he sees Rey and Finn walking away down a silver road, side by side, growing smaller until they're swallowed up by the light.

"Just wanted to introduce myself," Luke says, rising slowly, then squeezing Poe's shoulder. He's hesitating, waiting for something. For a weird, crazy moment, Poe wonders if he's being cruised. Do Jedis cruise? He assumed they just had sublimated saber duels to preserve their purity.

"In the middle of the night," Poe says.

That is definitely a smile this time that Luke gives him when he glances down. "I don't sleep much."

"I hear that," Poe says, rising as well and clasping Luke by the elbow. "C'mon, the mess usually has something that's kind of hot still."

-

Poe has asked himself the same question more times than he can count: what the hell _does_ the First Order do to the troopers? It's usually a rhetorical question, a way to vent his frustration, his anger, at what's been done to Finn.

But now the question isn't _what_ they did, or even, sickeningly, _how_ they did it. Kylo Ren gave him nice long extended taste of how they did it. They pull out your nervous system and play pittin's papa with it until they grow bored with you.

 _You're not nearly as good a man as you pretend to be_ , Ren said, so many times that it should have lost all meaning, cooked down to noise and melody.

It didn't. It just resounded. Still does.

The question now is how to fix what they broke on purpose. What never got to grow in the first place.

-

He has to wait until Rey returns from yet another Jedi excursion to talk to her. He'd use the comlink, but he can't think of a good reason to give her, let alone Skywalker, for the interruption. _Sorry, hope you weren't meditating, but I'm concerned about Finn's eating and defecation habits._

"He doesn't start to eat until everyone else already is," Poe tells her. She nods, like that's common knowledge, and he feels about ten times worse already. "You _knew_?"

She presses her lips together. "I thought you did."

"I should have," he says miserably. "What was I doing?"

Rey shrugs and blows a lock of hair out of her eyes. "I don't know."

He was being a selfish asshole, so far as he can tell. Finn's so _sturdy_ , and brave, and he's already gotten through so much, it didn't even occur to Poe that he'd need more help, or time, or whatever it is that he needs.

He doesn't even know what Finn might need. That's the first question, and he can't even answer that.

"He only sleeps six hours every night. Doesn't matter how much time he has, it's six on the dot."

Rey nods. "What else?"

"I _think_ he only uses the 'fresher twice a day, always at the same times," Poe tells her. "But I didn't want to follow him."

"You should have."

He kicks at the wheel of the tool carousel. "BB-8 did."

"So you do know."

He sighs. "Yeah. I do know."

It's simultaneously very easy to talk to her and incredibly frustrating. But that's not her fault; it's his, for being embarrassed as hell about all of this, about his own ignorance, and his complicity in it. _Obviously_ he should have noticed. Maybe he didn't want to.

"Anything else?" she asks.

"No," he says, lying through his teeth and suddenly anxious to drop the subject. He doesn't want to talk about erections with Rey, now or any other time. "That's about it. Lots to think about."

"Sure," she says. 

"You don't think so?"

She shrugs. "It's not all bad. Everybody has systems that make sense to them. Ways of doing things that help."

"Yeah," Poe says, "but usually, I dunno. We get some say in those things. Don't we?"

She wrinkles up her nose and looks over his shoulder. "I guess. I just don't think you need to worry so much about him, that's all."

"But he's --"

"You're worried about yourself," she says. There's a kind of finality, a firmness, to her tone that Poe can't help but respect. "You feel guilty, but changing Finn won't help that."

He runs his hand through his hair and tugs at it until the sting reverberates in his eyes. "Shouldn't I feel guilty?"

He's been failing Finn this whole time. That should make him feel whatever falls far past guilty.

"That's not for me to say," Rey says. He can feel her attention drifting back to more interesting problems -- wiring, and fuel injectors, and rebooted hyperdrives. The Force, all life, whatever that involves. "All you can do is work with what you have."

-

When Finn rescued him, only to vanish nearly immediately, Poe decided that this is what love simply _is_. That's what it does. It barrels you over, leaves you laid out flat and gasping and needy, and then it's over. You're never going to be the same but by the time you realize that, it's long, long gone.

Not that he _loved_ Finn. There was no way he could love someone he'd spoken to for all of ten minutes, of course. No matter how life-changing those minutes proved to be. 

He loved the feeling of it all. That's what he told himself. The thrill, the novelty, the _rush_. Everything he'd shared with Finn had been more exciting than the rest of his life put together, and his life had been far from sedate.

When Finn reappeared, the thrill redoubled. Escaping the _Finalizer_ , flying that TIE, that wasn't the height of anything; they were just getting started.

Looks like Poe's spent the time since Finn's reappearance daydreaming and believing in half-formed wishes. He hasn't noticed a goddamn thing.

He's looking now, and what he sees is a lot less thrilling - for him - but realistic - for Finn.

Finn and Rey are really happy together. That's it, that's the beauty and the truth all in one, right there. The joy they take in each other's company is like nothing else. They bend together when they talk, heads tilting, smiles reflecting each other. When Rey talks, Finn listens to her like it's the first music he's ever heard; when he tells one of his bad jokes, she laughs so hard that her shoulders shake and her hair starts to come loose.

The two of them can have what looks like the best time ever by sharing a bowl of Coruscantian bean mush and big pieces of flatbread.

Everything is new for them, and they're in this together.

No one else could possibly measure up.

-

Poe gets held up in the queue for protein water by Tulo from the ground crew, worrying about substandard replacement tiles. When he does make it to their usual table, Rey is already finishing her first course - she usually does three, methodically and devastatingly - but Finn's food is untouched. He's sitting, talking to Rey and one of the med-techs, his posture relaxed and laugh bright and loud. When he notices Poe standing there, he looks up and _grins_.

His smile always feels endless, dazzling. Wide and bright enough to knock Poe for a loop.

Poe bumps his arm against Finn's as he slides into his seat. "Eat up, buddy. This slop's even worse when it's cold. "

Rey's left cheek is distended as she chews. She watches them, and although she looks calm, a little curious, it makes Poe nervous.

Finn laughs. "True."

But he doesn't move to pick up his spoon until Poe's had a couple bites already.

Poe glances at Rey, who shrugs and tears off another piece of fruit. Finn looks at her, then over at Poe. "What?"

"Nothing," Poe says. He never realized before what a very bad liar he is when he's not on a mission. There, he can say whatever he needs to, fluently, persuasively. Here, with Rey tilting her head a little, watching, and Finn looking at him, spoon hovering over his food, Poe can't think of anything else to say. He's hyper-conscious of giving a performance, a _bad_ one. "Nothing."

Something flickers in Finn's expression. Maybe Poe's just guiltily projecting. Maybe he isn't.

"He's worried about how you eat," Rey says as she runs the rind of her nutfruit around the bottom of her bowl to sop up the last traces of pudding. "Because you wait. Because of your conditioning."

At that, Poe gets cold, right down the center of his body. Finn nods, acknowledging Rey, but doesn't look away from Poe for a long couple of moments.

"I'm not _worried_ ," Poe says. "Not like that. I just noticed and --"

"Are you mad at me?"

Cold goes to empty and Poe has to work his jaw before he can say anything. "No. What? Why would I be angry?"

Finn shrugs and goes back to eating. His head is bowed, his shoulders rounded.

"Finn," Poe says. "Man, I --"

Finn just keeps eating, mechanically, even more so than Rey. Rey's eating might look automatic, but it's every bit as enthusiastic as it is rapid. Finn, though, is just shovelling fuel into a furnace right now.

Poe looks over at Rey, hoping she can help, but she is back at the buffet, helping herself to another bowl of pudding.

He tries one more time. "Finn --"

"Back to work," Finn says, rising with his tray and empty plates. "See you later."

Now Poe's alone with cold food and he's still not sure what went so wrong. 

-

He doesn't think he was ever that young, not like Rey and Finn.

And he's glad of that, truly. He wouldn't want to have been a child soldier or an abandoned orphan. Having normal parents making normal fuck-ups was hard enough.

Their youth is uncanny; just as much as everything they went through together, it binds them. No one else is like them, and they seem just fine with that fact.

"I don't think it's their age," Leia observes over dinner in her quarters, just the five of them. Rey and Finn, however, are outside, having gotten into an argument that only duelling with mock sabers can settle. Then she adds, to Luke, "You weren't like that."

Luke's mouth twists a little. "I was awful."

"No, not at all," she tells him, and looks at him until Luke breaks his gaze. She turns to Poe. "He wasn't. He was wonderful."

Everyone has history. Poe has history with BB-8, whom he loves, but it's not really the same.

He misses his dad suddenly, fiercely.

-

So Finn has weird eating quirks, and sleeping ones, and won't, maybe _can't_ , acknowledge a hard-on. Poe shouldn't care. It's none of his business (except it _is_ , somehow).

It's the estrangement that gets to Poe the most. 

He tries to imagine being that alienated from his own body. He can't. Even after everything that went down with Ren and the _Finalizer_ , after crashing multiple times, Poe can't _leave_ his skin, can't think without already being embodied.

Desire is so directly, automatically connected to physical response that Poe's mind stutters and grinds to a stop at the idea that it might be otherwise. Even when he was a little kid, before "desire" became something remotely meaningful, he still knew what felt good and how to make it happen.

Even the hunger thing baffles him. That ought to be easier to imagine, delaying eating until a visual signal has been received. But Finn seems to do all of this unconsciously. He doesn't _know_ he's waiting. Just as he doesn't need an alarm to wake after six hours. He is his own alarm.

Rey says that everyone has their own systems and shortcuts, and of course she's right. If Poe had to think about every little thing he does in the cockpit, he'd be shot down before he could exhale once. He depends on that muscle memory every bit as much as he depends on BB-8.

But there's something different about what's been done to Finn. He doesn't have the words to describe that difference. He just knows.

When he thinks of how those breaks were induced, he starts to feel sick. His head swims and his gut twists, hollow and sour. He has a pretty good idea of how that went down.

 _No difference between you and me,_ Ren said. _I'm just more honest about who I am. When are you going to be honest?_

-

"Heading to mess?" Poe asks, still shrugging off his vest as he hurries to catch up with Finn. He'd brought in the X-Wing a little ahead of schedule, then rushed through check-in, keeping half an eye on passersby until he saw that crummy old jacket and heard Finn's big laugh.

"No, just back," Finn tells him. He doesn't look annoyed by the interruption, so it's probably just the hurry that's setting Poe a little off-balance, making him feel like he said, did, something wrong. "Slop is brown today, not beige. Enjoy, man."

"Yeah, will do." Poe watches him go, then remembers to unhook his transponder from the vest. He can't exactly afford to drop, break, and have to replace _another_ one.

He misses Finn. It's a stupid thing to feel, even stupider to say, even in the privacy of his own mind, but there you go. It's stupid but it's also true.

Finn is _right there_. He sleeps two bunks away. They share most watch shifts, so when Poe is planetside, they're awake at the same time. They eat most meals together, kick the bantha-bladder around, everything they used to do.

Somehow it's lonelier this way, still living in the same circumstances, doing the same things, than it would be if they were actually separated.

Again, that's stupid. But that doesn't mean it isn't true.

-

"He took me, too," Rey says. There she is again, turning up outside the group refresher when Poe steps out, towel around his waist, heading to his bunk to catch maybe half a watch's worth of sleep.

"Hi," he says and hands her his extra towel. "What was that?"

She folds the towel as they walk. "Ren. He took me, too."

"Heard about that," Poe says. He remembers Finn's panic, running like electricity right through him: _We have to go after her. I need your help. **She** needs help._

They've reached his bunk, so, sitting down, he takes the towel back to scrub dry his hair. It's been dripping in his eyes and down his neck and for some reason it makes him want to jump out of his skin. He pauses, peering up at her through his hair. "Really sorry."

She frowns -- or, something, he doesn't know what these minute shifts in her expressions mean. Her lips press together and a dimple deepens in one cheek before she says, "Thank you."

"Welcome," he says. Now he's dry but getting cold. "Heard, too, that _you_ didn't break for him."

She nods. "That's right."

Poe balls up the towel and throws it away, hard. "Teach me your secrets, padawan."

Rey doesn't say anything. Maybe she makes another subtle expression, but he feels like an asshole and can't look. Head down, he's got his fists balled up against his eyes for long enough to draw a couple deep breaths.

"Sorry," he says, pulling himself back together. She's still standing there, looking perhaps a little quizzical but wholly, serenely, composed. Even when he grins, as friendly as possible, she just blinks at him. "So. What brings you by?"

"Rey!" Finn calls, rounding the edge of the doorway. "You're early, my bunk's down --." He all but skids to a stop when he sees Poe sitting there. 

"Hey," Poe says. His skin prickles, neither chilled nor heated, but _aware_.

Finn glances at Rey, then back to Poe. When he speaks, his voice is loud, like he's giving a speech. "Man, what are you _doing_? Put some clothes on!"

Poe shrugs and lies back, arms behind his head. The towel around his waist rides down his hips and up his thighs. This is his room. He can actually do, or wear, whatever he wants. "What's your problem?"

"The rest of us don't need this kind of competition." Finn makes a show of stepping between Poe and Rey, spreading his arms to block her view. He widens his eyes at Poe, urging him silently to -- what? Play along? Mock fight? Poe gets the sense that he should understand what's happening, that it's very simple, but he doesn't. He doesn't know what Finn wants _at all_.

Poe swings one leg up onto the bed, leaving the other planted on the floor, and squirms into the mattress to get comfortable. "I'm good."

He's been naked, or nearly so, in front of Finn plenty of times already. It feels right. Comfortable. 

The bunk dips at the foot when Rey slips past Finn and sits down, drawing her legs up to her chest and looking at the two of them with big, unblinking eyes. "What competition?"

"Hell if I know," Poe says.

Finn sighs in frustration and sweeps one hand up and down to indicate -- Poe, it seems. "This. _Him_."

So Finn _has_ noticed Poe. What he's made of it, however, is still unclear. Why it's suddenly a big deal is also unclear. Rey doesn't care.

Maybe Finn doesn't understand that about her? But they seem to understand everything about each other. That's their _thing_.

Rey tilts her head and, just like that, Poe realizes she reminds him of BB-8 more than anything else. The way she studies things, her slight distance from her surroundings, even how she moves, so precisely but from a very slightly odd angle, all of it.

"He _should_ put some clothes on."

"Thank you!" Finn nearly shouts. "Finally, a little common sense."

"He's going to get cold."

"You can both go to hell," Poe says and closes his eyes. "I need a nap and you're being _very_ distracting, kids. Stay or go, but quiet down."

-

Sometimes Poe starts to think he's overreacting. Ren got into his head and stirred up all sorts of shit, and _that's_ what's wrong. He's fine. Finn is more than fine. Everything's fine.

He doesn't miss Finn, he has Finn -- well, Finn's friendship -- right here.

Tonight, they played six rounds of Corellian handball against Bastian and L'ulo, winning all but one. They make a good team, anticipating where the other's headed, switching to defense just when it becomes necessary, all of that. Afterward, Bastian had to buy three rounds at the pub, and then Finn and Poe wandered back to the barracks. The night is humid but not too hot. They could both use a 'fresher visit, but put it off in favor of watching a new installment of a bootleg Imperial holo-drama. Banned by the First Order! Censored by the Republic! See the untold story of the last Sith, now in 16D holo-color!

"Palpatine was never that hot," Poe points out when the credits roll. They're fading a bit, because BB-8's running low on juice, so he hooks him up to charge, then bounces back onto the bed next to Finn. "Impossible."

Finn laughs. "I don't know, Naboo's supposed to be full of ultra-attractive humans."

"I thought that was Alderaan."

Shrugging, Finn reaches past Poe to snag the last of the fruit-flavored candies he can't get enough of. "Maybe both?"

Poe holds the bag of candy out of reach, making Finn push and reach for it. He smells _good_ , sweaty but in a good way, and this is such a stupid, juvenile move, but Poe can't help himself. He gets his free arm around Finn's waist to drag him off, burying his face against Finn's shoulder and inhaling deeply.

But Finn is stronger than he is, better at using his weight, too, so he manages to scramble farther over Poe and nab the candies. Panting, he pauses there, half on top of Poe, beaming with victory.

"Cheater," Poe tells him and pushes him off.

"I don't cheat."

"Using your _strength_ to win, I can't believe it." That was definitely a hard-on Poe felt drag across his thigh. He glances at Finn's lap to confirm. "So underhanded."

Finn pulls himself up, digging his hand into the bag. "You got a weird definition of underhanded, you know that?"

Poe exhales and shimmies down a little. He elbows Finn's side and says in the most outrageously pornographic voice he can muster, "Getting a happy in your lappy, huh?"

"What?" Finn blinks confusedly even as he shifts in his seat.

"Been there," Poe says, lightly. "Just this afternoon, actually."

Finn's gaze is steady, his expression completely neutral. Poe could swear that he's never really seen him like this, empty-eyed and strangely, unsettlingly patient.

(Or maybe he has seen him and didn't notice. That's a very real possibility these days.)

This is the face inside each and every trooper helmet, isn't it?

"Was there anything else?" Finn asks when they've been quiet for a while. 

"Yeah," Poe says. Then he looks at Finn and sighs. "No, I guess not."

Finn might be younger than seems possible, but right now, patient and silent, he seems ancient. Old, weary, and sad.

"Actually, yeah. You're hard, man. That's all, no big deal, happens to everyone. Going to get fairly uncomfortable soon, though. And, I don't know, there are some pretty straightforward ways to take care of that." Poe doesn't remember feeling this uncomfortable about this kind of thing since he was about ten or twelve. 

"I'm fine," Finn says.

"Okay," Poe says. He has to shift now, because as awkward and _awful_ as this conversation is, he's right next to Finn and talking about boners and he's only, sadly, human. The guy smells _so good_ , it can't be legal. "Got it. If you weren't, though. We could help each other out. Take care of it."

"Do you want me to take care of it?"

"What? No! Or yes! Whatever you want."

"It's not up to me."

"The fuck? Of course it's up to you. Who else --" He doesn't have to finish the question. Finn's still looking at him, blank and patient, almost heartbreakingly so. It was up to everyone _except_ Finn, Poe gets that now.

He scrubs both hands through his hair and knocks his knee against Finn's.

"It's up to you," he says. "You can do anything you want. You know that, right?"

He sounds terrible. He sounds like a crèche-droid or something, patronizing and simplistic.

Finn sort-of smiles, but it's not very sincere. His lips don't part and his eyes don't crinkle in the least.

"They didn't let you take care of it?"

Finn shrugs. 

Poe can't help but ask. "So what do you do?" 

"Ignore it," Finn says. His voice is soft and he's looking away now. "Goes away. Or."

"Yeah, sometimes they take care of themselves," Poe says, grinning, shaking Finn lightly by the shoulder. "Especially in the morning."

Finn's voice is dull. "Three demerits for fouling linens."

 _Damn_. "Yeah, well, it's not foul. Far from foul," Poe says. "I mean, it's _gross_ , in some people's opinion, not mine, but it's not foul." He's straying rapidly off-topic. "Anyway, I'm pretty sure there aren't any demerits around here. If there were, I'd be rolling in them, especially these days."

Finn shifts, not moving away but not really looking at Poe, either.

"Sorry," Poe says. "This must be weird. No, this _is_ weird. Just wanted you to know that it's okay."

"What is?"

"All of it. Your body. You get to decide what you want with it. Only you."

He hears just how patronizing that sounds when it's already too late. 

"Yeah, well." Finn rubs his hands up and down his thighs before abruptly standing up. "It's late. Should get going. Sorry."

"Finn --"

But Finn's long gone. All the way, two doors down, might as well be the inner core.

Now Poe's alone and hard and he definitely can't sleep. 

He works fingernails over his chest, through the thin jersey of his undershirt, scraping one nipple, then the other, until his breath's coming a little faster, a little more shallow. He shoves his hand down his drawers and rolls his balls together until his dick's all the way hard, until he can't _not_ touch himself.

Usually he likes to take his time. But he's pissed, and impatient, and sick of feeling like an asshole. So tonight is quick, hard, mean. 

He can hear Finn asking, _"Do you want me to take care of it?"_ , smell the warm heat off his skin, feel the strength of his hand, his hug. Smell him.

The way Finn looks at him sometimes - brown eyes wide and wet and shiny, little smile that just makes his mouth somehow, impossibly, _more_ beautiful, with so much trust that Poe would never let him down - he's jerked off to that expression, a lot. That's simply part of having a crush, he'd figured.

It's different, now. It's dirtied now, stained, it's become about Poe taking advantage of someone he supposedly cares about, using that trust to get his own way.

Because, fuck it. Yeah, Finn, he _does_ want. Poe rolls on his side, mouth on the dry pillow that's nothing like a body, and fucks his fist, pulling hard, twisting the foreskin, thinking about watching Finn do exactly this. _Advising_ him. Lending him a hand.

Like buddies do. _Sure_.

He spits on his palm, then yanks harder yet, thumb catching his balls on every downstroke, nails tugging on pubic curls. Every little sting and pain gets him harder, fills his lungs with more air, throbs in his jittery hips. 

Finn stares at him, mouth open and wet, and asks if he can come -- _"Please, man, can I come? For you?"_ \-- and that's it, Poe's flooding his fist and sucking on his pillow.

Like a perverted asshole.

Somewhere, Kylo Ren is applauding, wheezing in that stupid mask, urging Poe on.

-

Finn doesn't sit with him at the next five meals. He'll wave to Poe, he still slaps his hand when they pass outside, but he has very clearly withdrawn himself from Poe's company.

Poe switches with Karé Kun to provide defense support on a longhaul freight run. When he returns, four standard days later, Finn doesn't mention the absence. They don't exactly talk beyond _Hey_ and _how's it going?_ , not any longer. These are conversations Poe could have - and has - with anyone else on base.

"I couldn't be mad at you," he wants to say, but that's stupid. It's _true_ but it's also stupid. What the hell is Finn supposed to say to that?

"I'm not mad": he could say that, he already said that. Maybe he should repeat it until Finn accepts the truth of it.

It's pretty obvious, however, that Finn is mad at him, not worried in the least that Poe is (for some reason, impossible to imagine) mad at him.

Planning and practicing just make him feel worse and more convinced that nothing will work. Words start degrading down to noise, like when he first started learning Binary and all he heard was a beep and then another, longer beep. 

He's the malfunctioning one here. Finn's holding together beautifully. He always has. That's a good half of what is so fucking _lovable_ about the man.

Maybe Finn's not the only one doing the avoiding here.

-

Poe is headed back to the barracks, a little loagy from another strategy session that ran nearly two hours over, hands driven deep into his pockets and head tucked down against the wind. When he realizes that someone's calling him, he stops. It could be anybody. They could have been calling for as long as he's been out here.

But it's Luke, catching up with him relatively quickly.

"Sorry," Poe says, "a little preoccupied."

"Walk you back?"

He's more than halfway across the base already, but if Luke wants to go out of his way --. "Sure, company's good."

They walk in silence, however, until they're just outside the barracks. Luke keeps close to Poe's side, robes brushing Poe's arms, his legs, his voice very soft, so mild that even this near, Poe has to shift to hear.

"This is me," Poe says outside the entrance. 

Luke's robe flaps around his legs. "Can I come in?"

Poe rocks back on his heels, feeling himself grin, warmth spread fast and tight right through him. "Yeah, of course."

Maybe right now he can't handle real missions, or even friendship with souls as goodhearted as Finn and Rey, but a late-night barracks visit with someone pressing a little closer than strictly necessary, that much, Poe excels at and thoroughly enjoys. 

When he starts fucking _this_ up, then it will be time to truly worry.

Hand light on Luke's shoulder, he ushers him down through the entrance, and then the twisting passageways, into his narrow single bunk.

There's no time to turn on the light. Not even to make his standard joke about _grand tour - sink, clothes, you, me, and, my favorite, bed - really excited to finally introduce you two_. Once the door's latched behind him, he has half a moment to take a deep breath before Luke's stepping in, closing the slight distance between them, putting his hands on Poe's face and kissing him.

Kissing him _really_ well, as a matter of fact. His beard is softer than it looks, soft and rustly, amazing in counterpoint to his warm, wet mouth. Poe shuffles his feet, moving backward with his hands on Luke's waist until he's hitting the edge of his bunk with the back of his knees, and then he's tipping back, pulling Luke over him.

His Jedi robes spill out over Poe's bed, covering them both, soft and darker than the night outside.

Luke moans when Poe moves his hips back and forth, so he gets both hands on Luke's ass, pulls him closer, moves faster.

"It's been a while, I'm not going to --" Luke stops, kisses him again, then buries his face against the mattress, right beside Poe's head.

"Yeah," Poe says, moving them onto their sides and palming Luke through his soft trousers. He's so hard, it's enough to make Poe wince in sympathy. He kisses Luke again, moving his teeth through the beard, finding Luke's lips with his tongue, and jerks him off nice and firm.

The moans Luke makes into Poe's mouth are nearly obscene, gorgeous broken noises that make Poe's hips move, drive him to grind against Luke's leg. 

He shoots into Poe's hand, cock jerking, and Poe softens the kiss until Luke is panting against his mouth. When Poe takes his own cock out, Luke's tongue flickers in the corner of his mouth. Poe kisses him quiet and jerks himself off with Luke's come all over his palm and wrist. He doesn't take his eyes off Luke's the whole time, watches him watching, makes it a little bigger, more dramatic, than usual.

In the morning, Poe fetches them matching portable cups of caffeine beverage from the mess. Three different people go to the trouble of remarking on that fact -- "two, huh? 'bout time" -- as Poe makes his way back to the barracks. His recent celibacy has been noticed, it seems. What's more, everyone's glad to see it come to an end.

Luke is awake when Poe edges back into his room, and accepts the cup gratefully. The white in his beard is very bright this morning; his eyes are darker, like an aging bruise.

"Funny, I could have sworn Jedi were celibate," Poe says.

Luke looks away.

"Hey, I was kidding. I'm sorry --" Poe touches Luke's shoulder, then realizes he doesn't know what to say. He takes his hand back. "It was a joke."

"It _is_ a joke," Luke says. He looks down at his hands, skin and metal, then up, forward. "A really bad joke."

"I used to be a lot funnier," Poe tells him. "Sorry."

"Not you," he says, squinting now so far into the distance he might as well be checking out the next galaxy over. "The...Jedi. All their rules."

"Rules are the means by which we distinguish order from chaos," Poe says, then snorts. "Or so Starfleet liked to tell us."

Now that he thinks about it, he can see where the Huxes got some of their inspiration.

"When I was --" Luke eyes him sidelong. "Rey's age, or Finn's, what I wouldn't have given to know every single Jedi rule. From fornication to waste disposal, handling of non-sentient insects to pruning of the Great Tree. I thought I could learn it all, and then, then I'd be set."

Poe hunches over a little more. "I thought the same kind of thing about starfighters."

Luke grins suddenly, _happily_ , something Poe hasn't seen him do without prodding from Leia. "Oh, I thought that about starfighters, too, believe me." 

"Not really the same, though."

"Systems engineered for specific goals and purposes," Luke says. "Fairly similar."

"But one's people," Poe says. "The other's just machines."

Luke is smiling now, looking at him. "An important fact that seems to have gotten lost along the way."

"Feel like this is going somewhere profound," Poe says and finishes his caf-bev. "Something about too many rules turning people into machines. Or the other way around. Treating them like machines increases dehumanization, maybe."

Luke nods, brows going up. He looks, if anything, impressed. 

That's an expression Poe remembers from teachers at school, granted to promising pupils with excellent answers. Not that _he_ ever earned such a look, not until he got to the academy. There was that time he rescued Xerl Lok from drowning when they were on a class trip, but that probably doesn't count.

It's a strange feeling, earning that look from a man whose tongue was in your mouth, cock in your hand, just last night.

"I don't really _do_ profound," Poe adds. He needs to explain further, maybe apologize, though he's not sure why. Except, next to the last living Jedi, maybe everyone has a little explaining to do. "It's never been my thing."

"What," Luke asks, drawing sigils on the coverlet between them with his machine finger, " _is_ your thing?"

Flying, definitely. Flirting and fucking, or they used to be.

"These days? Failing," Poe says. "With a little flying on the side. You know. When they let me."

Luke doesn't deny it, just nods fractionally, then walks his fingers across the rise of Poe's knee.

"What I wanted to ask you," Luke says, "last night --"

Poe tosses his cup toward the general vicinity of the compost. "You mean it wasn't about getting in my pants? I'm hurt. _Devastated_ , actually."

Blinking hard, Luke looks a little embarrassed.

"I'm kidding." Poe swallows against the strange prickly heat at the back of his mouth. Of course he misinterpreted what Luke was there for. Arrogant _and_ an asshole: great combination, Dameron, really attractive, going to take you _far_. "So. What was it?"

"I need to go to Yavin IV," Luke says, "I thought you might --"

Poe tilts his head. "You're a better pilot than I'll ever be, so it's not that you need a ride."

Luke rearranges his robes. "I thought you might like to see your dad. Visit home."

-

The last time he talked to his father, Kes was refusing Poe's offer to fly him in for Solo's memorial service. It wasn't an expense Poe minded shouldering; if he could have spared the time, he'd have flown the shuttle himself.

"Thanks all the same," Kes told him. "Think I'll stick with no."

They didn't _fight_ about it. It's difficult to fight with his father, who is every bit as stubborn as Poe, but silently so, far readier to shut up or end a call than stick to a point and yell about it. What they did was both grind their teeth before making their goodbyes in the most strained terms possible.

That wasn't all that long ago. Poe isn't expecting much from this sudden visit.

But Kes is _smiling_ , clapping Luke on the back, and any awkwardness or discomfort is Poe's alone. He senses that's becoming something of a theme. He just can't seem to predict anything these days, even about the people he thinks he knows best in the world.

"Sleeping loft up there," Kes tells Luke, opening the door to the small guest house he and Shara built when Uncle Rex moved in. He shakes Poe by the shoulder. "Usually when the boy comes back, there's a lot more bunking up together. Can get pretty noisy."

Poe raises his eyebrows. His father just grins at him.

"The loft looks wonderful," Luke says. "Thank you."

After dinner, Luke takes a walk. Poe tries to go with him, but it's like arguing with the wind. You can try, but nothing's going to change.

"Talk to your dad," Luke tells him, nothing like an order but impossible not to comply all the same.

So he clears the table and does the dishes, mismatched metal and pottery, then joins his father in the back yard.

"Hey," he says, dragging a sawhorse over to perch on. Everything about the house, he realizes, from the lawn furniture to the table setting, is for a single person. Visitors need to fit themselves into Kes's solitude, whether gracefully like Luke, or messily, roughly, awkwardly, like Poe.

"Kiddo," Kes says, setting down the soft rock he was carving. He touches his own temple and eye socket, then points at Poe's face. "What's this? You crash or what?"

"Something like that."

Kes nods. "Don't tell me, I'm just an old man."

"No, Dad, it's --" Poe picks up one of Kes's carving knives and turns it back and forth. "Ran into some First Order assholes and things got a little rough. Did crash, but that was later, when we were escaping."

"You and Skywalker?"

Poe has to laugh at that, at the mere idea of running a mission with Luke. "No, this is before he came back."

"Finn, right? Finn." Kes nods, then exchanges one chisel for another that looks, to Poe, exactly the same. "I got it now."

 _Do you?_ he wants to ask. _Because I don't._

"You healing up all right?" Kes asks eventually. It's only then that Poe realizes he's been waiting for Poe to talk. "How rough are we talking? How rough did it get?"

Poe kicks out his legs and leans back, gripping the sawhorse until he's balanced nearly parallel to the ground. Night comes softly back here, a long slow trembling loss of light that's nothing like D'Qar's sudden switch to cold dark.

"Poe --" Kes says, low, warning.

"I'm here, aren't I?" Poe snaps down, feet landing on the ground, his torso jackknifing. 

Kes turns his stone over in his hands, passing it back and forth from palm to palm. It's shaped like an egg, and maybe it's the low light, or maybe Poe's just not looking very carefully, but it doesn't seem like much.

Kes, however, is looking it over with as much care and affection as Rey gives her lightsaber or Finn lavishes on Poe's shitty old jacket (if he still does; he's probably got his own clothes by now).

When Kes does speak again, the sky is a little darker and Poe imagines the stone in his hand has warmed to match his body temperature. 

"This isn't what we --" Kes stops and nods, then starts again. "Can't speak for your mother, but this. This isn't what _I_ thought I was fighting for. Back then."

"What isn't?"

He goes to touch Poe's temple, but stops, hand in midair, when Poe flinches away. "This. _You_. Didn't have you just so they'd have more cannon fodder, years down the road."

Orphans and stolen children, the galaxy over. _It's the only name they ever called me,_ Finn said and Poe thinks, all over again, about kids lined up for slaughter.

"I'm not cannon fodder," he says.

Kes snorts once, then again. "We're all cannon fodder."

"What about Mom? What was she fighting for?" He'd ask _why'd she have me_ , but there's suspecting you were an accident, and then there's confirmation.

Kes purses his lips. "Don't ask me."

"But I am asking you." This is an old conversation. Poe could be ten again, or thirteen. Eighteen, twenty, twenty-seven. 

No one ever said they weren't both as stubborn as Bothan negotiators.

"Your mother was a complicated woman," he says, which is, word for word, something he has said to Poe more times than there are stars in any and all skies.

"Yeah," Poe says, heading back to the house, hoping there's something stronger to drink besides well water and Kes's gross fruit beverage, the stuff he imports from Frax by the case. "Funny, feel like I've heard that somewhere."

He finds a jug two-thirds full of Corellian brandy, as well as an unopened bottle of wine that he'd sent Kes not this past birthday, but the one before that.

Poe drinks down two small cups of the brandy - it's gone sour and more fermented - before opening the wine and carrying it back outside with two glasses. The gesture is perfunctory - Kes rarely drinks - but much preferable than obviously drinking alone in front of his dad.

"Here." He knocks the bottle against Kes's shoulder, then pours them each a glassful. He's already warmer, looser, thanks to the brandy, but there's always more relaxing to be done.

"Thanks," Kes says and actually takes a sip.

Poe finishes his glass, and pours another one, careful not to look over at his father until he's done. He wonders where Luke is.

Kes rolls his glass between his palms, squinting off into the woods.

"When you were born, if someone'd told me, Kes, this fat, adorable little fucker's going to waltz back into your life thirty years on with Luke Fucking Skywalker in tow, you know what I would've said?"

Poe drains his glass and pours another. "No idea."

Kes acknowledges that with a small nod. "Yeah, me neither. Wish I knew where you got it from."

"Got what?" Poe finishes the wine in his glass, but Kes doesn't answer.

"I'm not waltzing _back_ in," Poe says after a bit. "I'm here. Always am."

"I know you believe that." Kes pats his arm. "And I appreciate it."

There's not really anything to say to that.

After a bit, Kes announces he's turning in. Before he goes, when he's on his feet, he rests his palms on Poe's shoulders, then in his hair. The wine beats like a second pulse through Poe as he tips his head back to smile up at Kes. But Kes is still looking off into the woods. He pats Poe's head gently, twisting a few locks of hair around his fingers. Then, like he's come to a decision, he nods and heads off to bed without another word.

Poe finishes the bottle of wine. He plays with Kes's sculpture until, despite the drunkenness, he's cold and he can't see the stone in his hand in the dark.

He should go to bed. The thought of lying down in his childhood bedroom, hearing his dad snore, shrinking moment by moment back into the stupid kid he was, is unbearable.

(Much better to remain the stupid _man_ he is.)

Instead, he climbs up into the guest loft. When he kicks off his boots, they go tumbling off the edge of the mattress and thump hollowly on the floor far below. He ends up dozing a little, waiting for Luke to return.

When he does, Luke doesn't say anything. He hangs up his robes, steps out of his boots, and lies down next to Poe. He smells like the cold air, and sap, and faint traces of burning things.

"Were you _smoking_?" Poe asks.

"Burnt offerings," Luke says softly. "How's your father?"

"Lonely."

Luke kisses him then, soft and shallow, one hand moving up and down Poe's chest so slowly and lightly it almost hurts. He turns on his side, grabbing for Luke and pulling himself closer. But Luke doesn't change the kiss, or his touch. Everything's so _gentle_ that Poe grunts in frustration. He pulls away, banging his head back on the pillow, opening and closing his fists.

"I'll go," he says, but doesn't sit up.

"I don't mind," Luke says.

Angry, poisonous things to say flash through Poe's head - _isn't that just incredibly generous of you?_ and _really know how to make a guy feel welcome_ \- but all he has in his mouth is air. 

Luke touches his forearm, trailing fingers through hair, then down to Poe's hand, fingertips over knuckles, and back up again. Poe lifts Luke's hand to his mouth and kisses the palm, trying to be every bit as gentle as Luke had been.

It's an effort. He wants to wrestle and grapple, grind hard, pant for breath and sweat. He'd take that machine-hand on his throat, up his hole, far better, much more happily, than any soft, melting kindness. He wants sensation to drown him, fast, too fast to escape, so fast he has no choice in the matter.

This is a different kind of drowning, so slow that there should be plenty of time to escape, but so heavy that all he can do is sink a little deeper with each breath. He mouths Luke's hand, the creases in his palms and the loose skin over his knuckles, the pads of his fingertips and the junctures between fingers. He kisses, and tastes, and eventually finds Luke's mouth, and starts all over again there.

In the dark, Luke's face is blurred by shadows and beard, but his eyes catch the light, and sometimes his teeth do, too, when he smiles. He kisses without any urgency. There's no build, just this warm, spreading, _sinking_. Even much later, when Poe's on his knees, bent over, ass in the air as he blows Luke in his father's bed, there's only wind in the trees and smoke breaking up and the warmth of connection, and joy, and something like company, hovering before tearing and drifting away.

He fails to find his way back to the main house that night and oversleeps in the morning. When he emerges from the guest house, shirtless, hair like a vermin's nest, Luke and Kes are sitting under the trees, already finishing breakfast.

Making for the the house in search of food, Poe doesn't miss the head-shake, both disbelieving and disappointed, that Kes gives him.

He's hungover. He could very well be imagining things.

Despite - or because of - his hangover, Kes expects Poe to join him in hauling stones up from the river bed. 

"About time I fixed up the backyard," is his explanation. 

Because he has _so many_ visitors.

The day is hot as any Yavin summer, the light thick and golden as pollen.

"Thought this was something your friend could help us with," Kes says, wrestling one of the large, flat rocks up the slight incline.

"Yeah, he should be here. Just levitate these right over, and we can break for lunch with time for a nap." Poe leans over, taking the rock and rolling it the rest of the way to join its fellows.

Kes shakes his head. "No, your _friend_. The defector."

Poe concentrates on piling the rocks as neatly as possible. Finally, glancing over his shoulder, he says, "Who? Finn?"

"Thought you were bringing him," Kes says. He wipes his arm across his face and blinks at the sweat still in his eyes. 

He shouldn't ask. But he does, because why not get a little more to sting and work under his skin? "Yeah? Why?"

"Just assumed." Kes heads back down the hill. He's still talking, however, expecting Poe to follow. So he does. "Way you talk about him, made sense that he'd be the 'someone' you were bringing 'for something important'. Just did the math."

"Did it wrong," Poe says, and nudges his father aside so he can take the next rock all the way up.

"Appears so." Kes doesn't seem all that disturbed, or even apologetic. "Shame. Sounded like a nice kid."

"He is," Poe says on his way back down. "He's a great guy. Definitely has better prospects than hanging out with my sorry ass."

Hands on his hips, Kes surveys the truly pathetic amount of progress they've made and shakes his head. "Really is a three-man job."

"Should I apologize?" Poe asks. He gets the rock flipping, end over end, and doesn't wait for Kes's reply, if there is any.

That evening, Luke returns from the Great Tree with several twigs wrapped in damp fabric. He and Kes discuss grafting techniques. Luke wants to propagate the tree wherever the resistance has fought or will in the future, so Kes shows him several approaches - awl grafts and a veneer technique he developed back "when Poe was still fingerpainting with his own shit".

Poe heads out then, sweater over his shoulder, bottle of wine under his arm. He skirts the woods and follows the brook until he's in the meadow that borders the Lobins' land.

The air is rapidly cooling, though the sky is still light.

When Luke finds him, he shakes his head at Poe's offer of the wine bottle and sinks down next to him. Not too close - not nearly as close as someone you're fucking would usually sit - but not too far, either.

"Rey told me about Ren," Luke says. He squeezes shut his eyes. "About you and him, that is. What he did to you."

"Finn told her, I think." Poe swigs another mouthful of wine. "Cozy little gossip circle we've got."

Luke's robes move in the light breeze.

"But I think everyone knows by now," Poe adds. That isn't the issue, of course, how the story circulated, who had a hand in it.

"What he did, what he took --" Luke looks away, out over the meadow. "I can't put it back, but I can try to help."

Poe swallows and scratches the back of his ear. Pain still pounds there, and in his temple, sometimes. When he's overtired, or stressed. So basically most of the time, now that he thinks about it. Where a hangover headache is parched and throbbing, the traces of Ren's penetration are hot and sticky, like something oozing up, sick and dark.

"It's nothing," Poe says eventually.

Luke does not reply.

"It's not," he continues. "It's not...Hosnian Prime, or even Solo. Really. It's just a headache. Comes and goes."

Luke has turned a little to watch Poe. His hair moves in the breeze, across his forehead and under his mouth, but his eyes are steady.

"We could catalogue his atrocities," Luke says mildly, "define some parameters and rubrics by which to rank them."

Poe kicks out one leg and wishes for something to do with his hands.

"But that would be pointless masochism," Luke adds. "Don't you think?"

"Hey, masochism's rarely pointless," Poe says and grins. Even when Luke doesn't return the expression, he grins more widely. "It's given me some great times."

They return to D'Qar that night, after Kes has gone to bed. Poe holds the scion twigs in his lap as carefully as he would stemware, or someone's new baby.

-

The next time he sees Finn, he's been back from Yavin for a day and a half already.

BB-8 is careening ahead of him on their way to laundry when he hangs a hard right. He scoots right up to Finn's calves and bumps him hard.

Finn was talking to one of Connix's assistants, Ykd. His grin when he feels BB-8 and looks down is almost enough to make Poe smile back.

Then he glances over at Poe and something's a little different. Just the way the line of his shoulders changes angle, goes a little more acute; there's a new wrinkle between his eyebrows. He waves but then turns back to Ykd and resumes their conversation.

It's not as if Poe can fault him for that.

He waits a little. Finally, with a soft, slightly querulous beep, BB-8 rolls back to his side.

They pick up their fresh linens and when they pass HQ again, Finn's nowhere to be seen. Poe's certain that BB-8 was looking for him, too.

He sees Finn that night in the mess, across the hall, laughing loud and banging his fist on his tray at someone's joke.

Poe's busier than ever these days. He barely has time to recharge BB-8, swallow his own meal in three big gulps, and nap the bare minimum so he'll be cleared for the next flight rotation. He doesn't have the time, let alone the inclination, to think about very much at all. He's grateful for that, he has to be. The last thing he needs is to think about everyone who's gone. (There are so many.)

So he can't, quite, understand why he keeps getting distracted by this.

-

"There are resources," Leia tells him after a meeting. She's taken him aside and has herself angled such that he feels like the smaller one. "Psychological, post-traumatic, all sorts of things. Anything you need --"

"So this is the hot new gossip? Kylo Ren's creepy magic torture and how Poe burst like a soap bubble under it?"

Leia blinks at him. She's so still and composed that Poe immediately regrets -- everything. Saying anything, being here, even getting off Jakku. He should've just moved into a hollow in the dunes, taken up pottery or scavenging. Hid there, kept his shame to himself.

-

He runs into Rey in the main hangar. She squints up at him from her spot in the center of half a disassembled astromech and what looks like the reactor core to a late-model Imperial fighter.

"If you get those working together," he says, sinking into a crouch, "you could probably take over the galaxy within the week." 

Her eyebrows curve up and draw closer together. "I wouldn't do that."

"I know," Poe says. "Just saying _if_."

"Oh."

He grips his knees and bounces a little. "Is everything all right? Finn-wise, that is?"

She nods but doesn't look up from the reactor shield in her hands. "He seems great."

"He's --" Poe looks up to check who's around. Maybe the gossip _is_ getting to him; he doesn't remember wanting or needing to be this circumspect before. "I think he's avoiding me."

"Ask him why, then," she says.

"I'm asking you _first_." Poe starts to straighten up and his knee barks in protest. Great. He really is falling apart in every possible way.

"I don't know what else to say about this," Rey says. "Maybe you should talk to Luke."

Poe snickers a little and leans over to rub the pain in his knee. "I don't think --"

"You like Luke, and he likes you, very much," she says, and she'd have to be someone very different for that to be remotely a double entendre or laced with any innuendo whatsoever. All the same, he winces. "I'm sure he could help. He knows a lot more about people than I do."

"But you know about _Finn_."

She jabs an awl into the shield's outer hinge. "I think I've told you everything I know."

Leaning against the wall, Poe tips back his head and closes his eyes. "Okay. Thanks."

"Are you being sarcastic?"

"Sorry?" He opens his eyes. "No, it wasn't supposed to be."

She nods. "All right. Just checking."

He pushes off the wall and sets off -- headed where, he isn't sure -- when she calls after him. "You know him, too. Finn."

Poe turns around, spreading his arms out. "Do I, though? Starting to doubt that."

She doesn't say anything, so he completes the circle and keeps heading for the exit.

-

He'd always thought that the academy was the pinnacle of just how uncomfortably _intimate_ a group of people thrown into proximity could get. D'Qar, however, is giving the academy a serious run for its credits. The gossip runs faster than T-65s, breeds more profligately than wild pittins.

It's always like this, BB-8 suggests. In fact, right now things are relatively quiet, considering. The difference is that in the past, Poe didn't care as much. Or even notice, really.

He's not sure he agrees, but he'll defer to the droid. He's not all that reliable himself, not these days.

Someone - probably Wexley, but Poe's not all that inclined to figure out who - sees Luke leaving Poe's room one night. Or maybe it was when Statura saw Luke whisper something in Poe's ear near the end of another interminable meeting, then caught the squeeze of shoulder and lingering press of lips on his neck.

The origin isn't important. The _story_ , however, that's everywhere, almost immediately. He thought it was uncomfortable when the news went around about his torture, but that was just a prelude. That was about his failure, and bad enough for that. Now, he's something else, fumbling in real time, in front of everyone. Now he might as well be a character in his own head and other people's, too. He's become a character he can see, observe, a stranger to himself.

Ren emptied him out enough that he is little more than a doll, just a scrap of something, barely real.

-

When Poe returns from recon at the very edge of the Outer Rim, he files his report and drags himself to his bunk, so slowly it's like moving through wet clay.

He's on his back, in the dark, exhausted but somehow wide awake when Finn lets himself into the room.

He used to do that all the time. They both did, going back and forth so easily that Poe's helmet, Finn's boots, were equally likely to be in the other's bunk as his own.

That period lasted for little more than two weeks. Why does it feel like an entire era, then, and a long-ago one at that?

"Evening," Poe says. "Don't turn on the light, whatever you do. I _will_ use lethal force against you if that light goes on."

Finn's hands are stuffed into his pockets and he's standing there, rocking slowly, silhouetted against the tiny window

"Sit down, man." Poe wiggles over to make room. _You and the bed, so glad you guys finally get to meet_ : he has to snort at the stupid line. It used to be charmingly stupid. Now it's just sad. "I'm three minutes past unconscious, fair warning. You could say anything, do _anything_ , to me, I'd probably never know."

Finn settles down, but, even in the dark, he looks serious as anything, deeply concerned.

"I'm kidding," Poe says. "Mostly. What's up?"

"You and Luke," Finn says. "You --. Forget it."

"No," Poe says. "What were you going to say?"

Finn peers at him. Every thought, each feeling as it modulates, washes over his face. It would be remarkable - it _is_ remarkable - but it makes Poe worry in a desperate, impossible-to-articulate way. "Skywalker. You."

"Yeah."

Finn's looking away now, shaking his head. "You're really something else."

"Is that," Poe starts to say. _Is that a good thing?_ But it isn't, not the way Finn's chuckling a little, still shaking his head. And he didn't even need to wonder, did he? He knew it wasn't, knew he wasn't, long before he ever took Luke back to his room. Instead he shrugs. "Just felt right."

"Oh, okay," Finn says, brows jumping up, grin widening. "It _felt_ right?"

They're speaking different languages. The noises they're making sound alike, but these are two very different conversations.

"Sure," Poe replies, rolling his lips together, sucking on the inside of one cheek. "We can't all be Force-sensitive, right? But sometimes you get a good feeling anyway and go for it."

"Okay, buddy, whatever you say." Finn pats Poe's thigh. He's still shaking his head as he stands up.

Poe covers his eyes with his forearm as the door latches. He's tired. That's okay.

He never said he was a good man. He never thought he was all that bad, either, but Finn's a lot more trustworthy on this score than Poe himself.

*

In a firefight with a First Order capital ship and its swarm of TIEs, Poe sees a gap in their formation. BB-8 calculates an 87.24° angle for the X-Wing, which almost works. Going nearly vertical, tucking in the foils, he manages to score seven hits that disable the fore cannon, but he also exposes his ventral side, shieldless. One ugly bowtie lands what is _clearly_ a lucky hit and Poe goes spinning.

BB-8 says something that better not be "I told you so".

Poe ejects them both. As the EVA suit inflates around him, he realizes that the last thing he said to Finn was basically a lie.

He hasn't gone for anything since they got back from Starkiller, except in battle. Even Luke made the first move.

In battle, though. He's going _nuts_.

In other words, from another perspective, he confuses reckless and ingenious again. At least that's what Admiral Statura argues, and his opinion carries the day. Even though Poe is laid up in a bacta tank with a broken collarbone, he gets hit with another three days of disciplinary leave. Clever, he thinks, of them to hold the hearing while he was jarred.

_What do you have to say for yourself, Commander Dameron?_  
_glurble glub glub?_  
_Adjourned!_

The X-Wing is totalled, so once he's sprung from the tank, he and BB-8 are stuck here in Gomlt City for at least the next little while. He could see about getting a shuttle to Takodana or Naator and hope that someone's stopping there on the way to D'Qar. Or he could hire his own ship and go directly back. Somehow he just doesn't feel like spending his own credits on that, not at the moment.

When he's discharged, replete with painkillers and some extra calcium tablets, he finds a hostel near the medi-unit. It's nothing fancy, but it is quieter than the barracks. His narrow sleeping capsule looks out directly on the hostel's enormous neon sign but he's slept through much, much worse.

Later, he figures, he'll hit the town, make more of a mess of himself, then sleep it off. _Then_ , he'll decide what to do. Last thing he'd ever want to do is be rash, let alone _reckless_.

He passes out and doesn't stir until long past municipal curfew. So much for painting the town red; his party has dwindled down to injecting the last of his painkillers, checking that BB-8's still there, then turning over and going back to sleep.

He dreams about Finn. It's a sappy dream, lit with orange and red hues that throb like a circulatory system. Everything's a little fuzzy around the edges. Everything except Finn's smile, which is as huge and blinding as ever, sharp and glowing. They're flying in an X-Wing that miraculously, impossibly, has two seats side by side. Poe is making it do loop-d-loops through an asteroid field. 

As they tumble and corkscrew, Poe pours his heart out. That might be literal; it feels like his skin is incredibly thin, far more sensitive than usual, and he has no flight suit to protect him. He's flying naked.

"I'm sorry," he tells dream-Finn, "I really overdid it. Let wishes get away with me, and then when it didn't work out, I got mad, and none of that's your fault, and I'm so, so sorry."

Finn smiles gently. "Man, it's not a problem. Don't feel so bad, it's not a big deal."

They barely clear the next rock; Poe's stomach is in his throat as they somersault. "It is a big deal, but it's my big deal. I want you to know that."

"It doesn't have to be," Finn says. He's grown, somehow, he seems a lot bigger than Poe remembers him. "Don't make it be."

"I miss you."

"Hey," dream-Finn says, leaning in close, his safety harness stretching with him. "I'm right here."

"No, I mean I _really_ miss you."

Finn looks at him closely. His face is florid in the light, radiant. "You sure you're all right?"

"I need you," Poe says as they tumble round, three times, and somehow Poe can feel the wind in his hair. "I really need you."

"Can you give us a minute?" Finn says, over his shoulder, but there's nothing there but the S-foils glowing red. Maybe he's talking to BB-8. He looks back at Poe, and puts his hand on Poe's shoulder. His hand is warmer than anything, and even though he's holding the controls, Poe still tilts a little into the touch. "Poe? Man, you okay?"

Poe blinks. The asteroid field, the X-Wing, everything has vanished, except for the red glow from the sign. And Finn's worried face. His hand on Poe's naked shoulder, his eyes narrowed with concern, his breath right there, breaking on Poe's cheek.

Well, **fuck**.

"We're on a mission," Rey says when Poe's clean and caffeinated and dressed - that is very important, he needs a cover even as insubstantial as jersey and wool. He's also determined never, ever to talk about what just happened. 

That's going to be difficult, considering Finn is all of a meter away, leaning against the hatch, arms loosely crossed over his chest.

"I'm on leave," Poe tells her. "The serious kind. Official, you really fucked up this time, no more second chances, disciplinary leave."

"Not anymore. We're picking you up, and we need to infiltrate -- what was it?"

Finn replies, voice steady and dispassionate, "We should only talk about details back on the _Falcon_."

Rey nods excitedly and slaps her thigh. "Right. Opsec! I keep messing that up."

"You'll get the hang of it," Poe tells her. "Just need a little practice."

She grins at him. He knows why Finn loves her; you can't help yourself, not in the face of that smile, the purity of her heart. He feels grubbier than ever before her.

"But I think I'm just going to hang around here," Poe continues. He doesn't look at Finn, but he also doesn't _not_ look at Finn. He just addresses the room in general, as if he's giving a briefing, and makes sure to keep his tone as casual as he can. "Think I could use the break, honestly."

"No, we need you --" Rey starts to say.

"It's cool," Finn puts in. He has even less reason than Poe to want to be anywhere remotely in proximity. "We can rejig the plan, no problem."

"Finn!" When Rey raises her voice, they both straighten up. Poe would crack a joke about that, but he's not talking to Finn. And now is not the time for humor, not with Rey frowning like that. "We're not rejigging anything. We're going, all three of us, to the _Falcon_ and we'll discuss it there."

"You've already got a great co-pilot," Poe tells her. "I'll just be deadweight."

Rey stares at him. No, that's a _glare_ , beneath furrowed brow, a steely glare that somehow informs him just how disappointed she is (a lot) but also how determined she is to ignore his nonsense (even more).

"You're a lot more than a pilot," Finn says. His voice is quiet, maybe even a little annoyed, but firm. "And you're a damn good one, anyway."

Rey nods, very slowly, without breaking her glare. "Do you have a bag? No? Let's go, then."

It's just easier to comply, it really is.

\- 

"Ever hear the one about the Jedi, the Stormtrooper, and the washed-up flyboy?" Poe asks.

Chewbacca has the _Falcon_ cloaked in the upper atmosphere and they've parachuted down, something Poe hasn't done since childhood, into a boulder field on the outskirts of a droid factory. 

They're creeping through the field, ducking behind each Bantha-sized rock, heading for the factory.

"Sssh!" A few steps ahead, Rey motions behind her back for them to stay still.

"Me, neither," Poe answers himself. "But I bet it ended bloodily."

Finn elbows him gently. "Or gloriously. Try to think positive."

"Sure," Poe says. "I'll get right on that."

Shaking his head, Finn just says, "Later. We're talking about this later."

This better end bloodily, because there is no way Poe feels like going through with that conversation.

He's on this mission because he knows astromech droids. Rey's got the force, Finn is good cavalry, and Poe knows droids. Of course, Rey knows droids, too, and Finn has a touch of the force, so, again, Poe would like it noted that he is, just by definition, extraneous. If they needed muscle, they could have gotten any of the marines on base. All of them outweigh and outlift Poe by at least twenty kilos.

 _Scrawny little dude, aren't you?_ he remembers his first real trick saying. _Pretty, though, I'll give you that._

Poe had been less than a week at the academy when he headed as deep as he dared into the city's disreputable district. He had a term's worth of credits in his account, ready to blow on whatever he needed to do to get laid. He was determined to say goodbye to every possible version of his virginity and, somehow, really finally be a grown-up.

(He's always been an idiot. Poe can see that now.)

That guy - a bouncer at the first bar he tried to get into, built like a _wall_ , handsome like a Knight of the Old Republic - could pick Poe up with one hand. He laughed as he did, hauling Poe up until Poe wrapped his legs around the guy's waist automatically, clinging, squeezing, half-monkey, half-horny kid. "Pilot? Yeah, I can see that."

Then he told a joke about cockpits that makes Poe laugh to this day. (Because he's an idiot.)

The mission goes surprisingly well. If you listen to Rey, Poe is finally coming to understand, success tends to follow. It might take the scenic route, which is studded with terror and sudden dropoffs, but it does come. They dismantle a truly disgusting first-generation neural droid hook-up with at least a minute to spare before it goes online _and_ they get out of the facility just before the self-destruct hits. The hook-up sports thick-gauge wires wrapped in pulsing red flesh. The flesh appears to be grown in modified bacta tanks arrayed around the main floor, vats of amorphous meat shivering in thick gelatinous liquid. Poe stops short, staring at them.

He doesn't move until Finn shoulder-checks him awake to hand him a laser saw.

He knows full well that there are hybrid droid-organics already; there have been for years. But this is _personal_. He and BB-8 work so well because they're separate, he's always believed that. Friendship's about coming together, not being half-welded, half-grafted into one disgusting whole.

"You okay?" Finn shouts as he dashes to the next compute monitor. Rey is across the room trying to manually shut down the main control circuit.

"Yeah," Poe says and gets to work. He tries to hold his breath so he doesn't have to smell the meat cooking, but that just makes him lightheaded. His vision swims, the floor tips. Chunks of the flesh squish under his boots. When Finn circles back, shooting out each segment as he passes, Poe lobs a lump of flesh past him. "Gives new meaning to the phrase wetwork, huh?"

Finn doesn't reply, but he does scowl and shake his head, so the joke isn't a total failure.

Back aboard the _Falcon_ , Rey and Finn are hugging, bouncing up and down. Their arms are around Poe, and he's moving, too.

He might as well be back in the hold, hanging in the freezer with the rations. Still and cold, or down in the facility, just one wiggling chunk of meat trying to reach its fellows.

So it's not simply that he misses Finn, is it? Because Finn's right here, hugging him, rocking back and forth. He smells like fresh sweat and thrilled excitement, his face buried in Poe's neck, and this might be everything Poe thought he wanted. 

That was never the whole problem.

He could probably kiss Finn right now, just wrap his arms around him dip him back, make it grand and romantic, _pour his soul_ into it. From anyone else, that would be a beautiful thing.

All he'd do, he knows, as he detaches from the group hug, is make Finn choke on the dark, sticky, bitter bile. Poe doesn't know a hell of a lot, but he knows this much: Finn deserves so much better than that, than him.


	2. Move beneath an evil sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Are you talking about my penis with Rey and Skywalker?" Finn asks. "And if so, **why?** "

He doesn't get to see Luke very often. It's not the gossip, it's just their schedules, the usual frantic scramble of life on base. 

So when Poe has to serve, however belatedly, that disciplinary leave, he holes up in Luke's small private quarters and does not leave. The quiet here is so much more pervasive, warm and calm, than the clamor of the barracks. He catches up on paperwork, sleeps a lot, watches some old holo-dramas, even picks up a book or two.

Luke doesn't seem to mind. He comes and goes, fetching scrolls and maps, or sits cross-legged on the floor, silently, for hours. Or he shrugs, smiling so quickly you can never quite be sure he _did_ smile, and climbs up next to Poe, weaves their legs together, and closes his eyes contentedly.

There's always a faint trace of ozone on Luke's skin, like he's just come out of a lightning storm. It gets sharper when they're kissing, then sharper yet when they fuck. Luke's eyes will widen and darken when he comes, the scent spiking, his mouth dropping open, and it's unbearable and beautiful all at the same time. Poe hopes, maybe wishes futilely, that it'll stick to him. It's the scent, he thinks, of survival, and wisdom. Insight and kindness, and he could really use a touch of all of those.

"Conditioning can be undone, right? Stormtrooper conditioning." It's morning, the last day of Poe's leave. Poe's still in bed; he rolls over on his stomach, naked, chin on his folded arms.

"I'm no healer," Luke says. He's only half-dressed, but he stops immediately and turns his attention to Poe. 

"I don't know who to talk to," Poe says. He smiles apologetically and scratches the back of his neck. "Rey said you could help."

"Rey has a very interesting opinion of my capabilities."

Poe laughs a little. "All of her opinions are pretty interesting."

"I'm not a mind reader, either. You understand that, right?"

Ren, looming over him, clawing at his mind: Poe winces and tries to shake it off. "Yeah, I know you're not." 

It's a good thing Luke isn't. 

That is, in itself, a terrible thing to think.

This was a bad idea. But it's not as if he can go to the general and say, _hey, I think our defector's still got a lot of First Order brain shit going on_. She'd have to do something then, and something would probably involve Finn being sent -- away, off-base, somewhere _else_.

He should probably worry that he's willing to make this choice for everyone here.

"Your friend's a good man," Luke says. When Poe turns over onto his back, Luke drags his fingers up Poe's chest, then along one fork of his clavicle.

"I know." Poe's face is warm, his skin yearning for more, and firmer, touch. "Believe me, I know."

Luke smiles at that, eyes crinkling up, and Poe has to look away. The kindness in Luke's face is too much, too sharp and almost sad, to take face-on. 

"Not sure he's my _friend_ , though, not any longer," Poe continues, "but that probably supports your point even more."

"He's a good man," Luke continues, not ignoring Poe so much as easing him away from the subject, gentle voice and gentler hand on his neck. "I don't think you have anything to worry about."

"Yeah?" He wants to believe that. This is a Jedi, after all. You have to trust what a Jedi says, otherwise what's the point of anything? But Poe finds it hard to imagine forgetting, let alone shedding, all this worry. It has begun to become a part of him, adhering even more tenaciously than that black slime, reaching just as deep as Ren's fingers ever did.

"Yes," Luke says. "He's got a lot of light to him. _A lot_. But some chains, too. Constraints."

In his mind's eye, he sees Finn caged, trying not to shiver while wearing that blank, patient look on his face. Poe swallows hard and tries to keep his voice steady. "How do you fix that?"

"He's not a hyperdrive or laser cannon. Can't take people apart, clean them up, and reassemble them."

"Guess not, no." Something sinks through Poe's chest, scraping as it goes.

"Wouldn't want to," Luke adds. His bionic hand is suddenly very heavy on Poe's forearm. He rests his forehead against Poe's for a moment, then pulls away, composing himself just like Leia does. "It's not right. We've talked about this."

If anyone else spoke to Poe like this, sort of moralizing and instructionally and oh-so-very patiently, he'd probably have to walk away before he blew his top. But it doesn't bother him, not right now, not coming from Luke Skywalker.

A Jedi likes him. Talks to him, laughs at his dumb jokes, welcomes him to his bed, _sucks him off_ , calls his name when he's coming: Poe can't be that much of a mess, not if a Jedi likes having him around.

Then again, Jedi are, or were, also notoriously susceptible to pity and good works. Helping the helpless, doing what no one else is willing to do.

Poe sits up, knees against his chest, leaning over. He should get dressed.

"I haven't told you anything you didn't already know," Luke says.

"I don't know about that." Poe turns his head, rests his cheek against his kneecap. "I can be really slow."

-

"Are you talking about my penis with Rey and Skywalker?" Finn asks.

Poe somehow, miraculously, manages to swallow the ale in his mouth. The pub is half-empty in the late afternoon so if he did spew the ale, he might not hit anyone but Finn. 

"What?"

Finn rests both hands on the back of the chair on the other side of Poe's table. "Are you talking about my penis?"

There's heat, and hilarity, or maybe hysteria, probably both, overwhelming Poe, taking over his face, closing up his throat, smearing his vision. He looks around a little desperately. "Can you sit down? Maybe lower your voice?"

"All right." Finn shrugs and pulls out the chair. "But it's a simple question."

Poe takes two more sips, too quickly, and the last one comes back up his throat, a little up his nose, too. Once he can breathe again, he asks, like this is in any way a normal conversation, "How are you, anyway?"

Finn presses his lips together. "I'm all right. You?"

"I miss you, actually." He remembers, a little late, to exhale.

Finn's expression softens, slightly. Around the eyes, Poe would guess, maybe in the tension in his jaw. But what does he know? He's proven to be just about the worst Finn-observer around.

"Yeah," Finn says eventually. "You _keep_ saying that. What's wrong with you lately?"

The awful thing is that he sounds genuinely concerned. Poe rolls one shoulder back, then the other, and flips hair out of his eyes that hasn't been long enough to be _in_ his eyes since he got it cut last week. "I'm in a tailspin, apparently."

"Nah," Finn says, "it's not that bad."

"Feels like it," Poe says. "And I'm sorry."

"For what?"

Poe shrugs expansively. Where to start? "Everything. Tailspin. Being an asshole. That eating thing. Talking about your penis, definitely that one."

Finn grins at that, which is surprising but also incredible. A full, old-fashioned, thoroughly _Finn_ -like grin, too, white teeth and eyes creased all the way closed. "Yeah, that's pretty strange, man."

"I didn't _actually_ mention it. Your penis," Poe says. He should shut up. Finn's smiling. He doesn't actually _have_ to fuck this up. "Not to them, anyway. Thought about it, though." That sounds terrible. Why can't he shut up? "But I shouldn't have said anything, period, to anyone."

"You could talk to me," Finn says quietly.

"I did, and fucked it up worse."

"No," Finn says and he puts his hands, palms up, on the table. Staring down at them, as if he's written crib notes there, he adds, "I was confused. Embarrassed, I guess. And then when I wasn't, I was --"

He doesn't finish the thought. His palms look like leaves shed by a red aspen back home, pinkish, threaded with darker lines. Lovely, almost delicate.

Poe kicks him under the table. "Really did miss you. Do."

He still doesn't know what that _means_. They haven't been separated by anything, except Poe's own stupid thoughts.

Finn looks him over, head tilted, faint smile on his lips. "Yeah."

"So we're okay?" Poe asks. Because he can't leave well enough alone. Because he's reckless.

Because he's an idiot.

"I don't know," Finn says. He still sounds gentle, and friendly, but that's just who he is. That doesn't actually have anything specifically to do with Poe.

"Yeah, that's fair." Poe bites his tongue and thinks it over. "Thanks, though. For this at least."

That's what he's been missing. His daydreams about who Finn could be.

All that hope, all those ridiculous feelings, the thrill and novelty and _longing_ for Finn, those were all in Poe's head, too. Because here's the man, right in front of him, and he's his own person. Separate, self-sufficient, singular. So much better than Poe or any of his stupid daydreams.

He hasn't gone for anything because there was nothing there. Nothing outside of his own idiot head.

That's grief, isn't it, sliding slow and rocky through him. That moment that always comes, when you look around and realize they're not here. They're not ever coming back and you're stuck out here, alone and getting colder. 

What he thought Finn was, or could give him, or --. That's dead, and he's in mourning. He's been mourning this whole time.

He needs to get out of here.

He makes it all the way to the washroom before Finn catches up with him.

"We're not done," Finn tells him, blocking the door with just his arm.

"Can I at least take a piss?"

Finn narrows his eyes. "No."

Poe sizes him up, feints left, then reaches for the door's handle.

With the flat of his hand, Finn shoves him back into a nearby table. Not hard, just firmly, like you'd correct an errant herd animal.

The gossip's going to be _very_ interesting over dinner tonight. 

"There's nothing to talk about," Poe says even as he gives up and takes a seat. "I'm fine now. Getting to fine."

The way Finn shakes his head, the movement small but deliberate, impatient and a little exasperated, is something that Poe's pretty sure he only does around Poe. In response, apparently, to Poe's particular brand of bullshit.

"Believe what you want," Poe says, leaning back in the chair, then tipping forward. Back again. "It's true."

Finn crosses his arms and _looks_ him over. The expression isn't hard enough to qualify even as a stare. He's probably regretting this already. His eyes are unreadable, but so bright, their color complex as any nav computation or poem.

"Your interrogation technique could really use some work," Poe says.

Finn gives him that little headshake.

"Rough me up, really make me believe you want to hear it." Poe spreads his arms and leans back farther. He bares his throat. "Come on, let me have it."

His skin is heated, brilliant, for a moment, taut and _luminous_. His heart drops and thuds as he waits.

Finn does frown now. "That's messed up."

"No, it's pretty straightforward." Poe swallows, lets the heat licking at the edges of his mind spread. "Come on."

Hand on his shoulder, Finn tips Poe forward, bringing all four chair legs back on solid ground.

Poe closes his eyes. What good are decades of First Order training, anyway, if Finn's just going to be kind and virtuous and so sweet, so patient? "Give it to me."

"Poe --"

"Make me," Poe says, opening his eyes, looking at Finn. His pulse beats hollow.

"Stop it."

He doesn't want to. But he's not even worth that to Finn, is he? Not worth working over, not even a slap and kick.

"Not for nothing," Poe says, dropping his arms and slumping forward. He's loose, even baggy, now. "Just, in my experience, that's what happens. How it works."

"You said you missed me." Finn sounds slightly scraped-up, careful, like the words are nettles in his mouth. "But I'm right here. I've been here the whole time."

"Yeah, well." Poe rakes one hand, then the other, through his hair. He's almost all the way hard, because his dick is an even grosser pervert than he is, which is fairly remarkable, now that he's thinking about it. His breath comes a little rough through the tightness in his chest. "I was kind of out of my mind on painkillers."

Headshake.

"I _was_ ," he insists. When Finn glances away, shifting his weight slightly, he looks for a moment like a stranger. He's filled out a little, perhaps. Maybe Poe just wants him to be that. "And I did. I did miss you."

"But --"

"I missed a fantasy. Daydream." Poe holds up one hand. "I'm fine now. I really am. Or, you know. I'm getting there."

Finn shakes his head, but it's not the impatient shake. It's _frustrated_. Poe feels an apology forming on his tongue when he realizes that Finn's frustrated by himself. 

Finn unfolds his arms, then looks at his hands. "I don't know what you want. Not in general, not from me."

Poe laughs, much more loudly than is remotely appropriate. "When you figure _that_ out, can you let me know?"

-

He's allowed to fly again, but Pava's squad leader now. Poe knows that he should be hurt and offended, that this should sting his pride and spur him to do better. That's why Statura did it, after all. Honestly, however, he's a little relieved. It's better, at least for the time being, to take orders and execute commands. He doesn't need the stress.

She's really good at giving orders, too. Frighteningly good, in fact.

He wakes up after an actual, honest-to-heaven _successful_ mission without a hangover or injury.

There's a holo-message waiting from his dad. He could have sent it through BB-8, but he has a thing about droids eavesdropping. So Poe drags out the nearly-obsolete player from his trunk and, after finally remembering his old password, hits **play**.

"Been thinking," Kes says. "And I don't like how we left things, kiddo."

Poe sits up in bed, blanket tangled around his lap, and moves the player to his pillow.

"Your mother," Kes continues. "You know how it goes. She was a complicated woman, Poe. That's not me dodging you, it's just the truth, best I can say. When she left the Alliance, something died in her. It just took a little longer to kill her all the way."

Poe goes to hit the stop button - he's not up for this, he's _not_ \- but gets pause instead. So his father's stricken face hovers there in mid-air, rippled and striped by the lumo-bits.

"I loved her. Didn't think I could love anyone more, didn't seem _possible_. Not til you came along."

It's Poe's turn to look away, but he can't, much as his eyes are burning.

"She loved us, don't ever think she didn't. Just loved flying more. Couldn't get her planetside for love or money, not for long. When she did come down, well." Kes doesn't say anything for a long time. The audio isn't high-quality (Kes will always be frugal to a fault), but Poe's memory supplies the hoarse, wet sound of his father clearing his throat, swallowing, then coughing a couple times into his fist. "That's what I can't seem to tell you. Not man to man." He smiles at that. " _Man_. Never getting used to calling you that. Face to face."

Someone yells, out in the passage, and Poe takes a second to scrub the blanket over his face, then wrap it up around his chest.

He wishes Finn were here. That makes no sense, but he's not about to start worrying about _that_ , not this late in the game.

Finn could watch this. Finn would _get_ this, then tell Poe what he should be feeling.

"Don't quite know what else I want to tell you." Kes leans toward the recorder, as if by doing so he can see Poe _now_ , in this moment. "Just - don't go your mother's way. Please. Let yourself find something more. It don't matter what it is, just." He peers at Poe, brow furrowed, wrinkles suddenly deep as gorges around his eyes. "Not about to lose you, too."

There's a sour upsurge in his chest, a sick, mean reaction of _nice guilt trip, Dad, that's great_ , but Poe swallows it. He watches the holo again. His father can be clumsy with words, but not with emotions. With emotions, Poe has never known him to be less than ruthlessly honest.

He's a lot like Finn that way, come to think of it.

That said, what exactly is Poe supposed to do with this information? It barely _is_ information. It's much closer to Kes's private understanding of loss than anything close to factual.

He tries to picture being his father, with an obnoxious, hyperactive little kid plus a wife feeling, acting, like Poe has been feeling and acting lately. Distracted, hateful, more able and willing to shove himself into a fight and hope for a messy loss than take a breath, try for patience.

His thoughts falter, then reel, at that, careen away like a magnet introduced to another. 

Kes must have been so _freaked out_. Fuck.

"Love you," Kes says at the very end, then, like he always does, like he's calling from the field, "Dameron out."

-

"I don't believe in 'second chances'," Leia says. Dwarfed as she is by the comscreens surrounding her and her enormous desk, she still manages to fix Poe in place surely as a pin in a bug. "I believe in people."

"Yes, ma'am," Finn says.

"Stand down, Finn," she says, not unkindly. "This is for Mr. Dameron's benefit."

"Yes, ma'am --. Sorry." Finn raises his hands in apology and takes a seat.

Poe remains standing before her. 

"You and Finn are to disable the mainframe in the former Imperial barracks on Frygas-2. A starskiff, enough rations and charges to get you through, and an emergency comlink are all we can spare."

"I'm sure we'll be fine," Poe says. What else is he supposed to say?

"Ma'am, if I may --" Finn starts, then, at Leia's glance, bites his lip and sits back.

"Anything else?" Poe asks. Maybe if he just drapes himself in military protocol, the way a Hux wraps himself in the Imperial flag, he'll be fine. For the rest of his life. "Ma'am."

"Yes. Cut the shit," she tells him. Then she gives him a tight little smile. "If you would."

She has to know he's trying.

-

First, however, they need to obtain the launch codes for the mainframe's defenses. That's going to take some creative thinking and planning.

-

Luke and Rey have been off on an ice moon, testing psychic flowers or something, for over a week. By the time they return, Poe is about to jump out of his skin, so anxious to be touched that he's grinding his teeth. He hurries Luke back from the airfield, hands on his waist, stopping a couple times to make out and _touch_. Each time it gets too cold and they get going again, rushing through the barracks, then kissing against the door to Poe's quarters.

"I really missed this," Poe says, fumbling behind his back at the door.

"I missed _you_ ," Luke says. 

Poe frowns, not sure what the difference is supposed to be, when the door finally opens.

He backs into the room, drawing Luke in by the hand, smiling, ready to shove him back on the bed -- he's already picturing Luke landing, bouncing, opening his arms as Poe crawls up to straddle him -- but the light's already on.

There's a gasp and a clatter.

"Oh! Oh, wow, I'm sorry, I'll --" Finn jumps to his feet off the bed, brushing off his pants, almost saluting.

"You okay?" Poe asks, dropping his coat on the floor, yanking off one boot. He leans against Luke for balance, then pulls up. "What's wrong?"

"I'll wait outside," Luke says, already turning.

"No, it's cool --" Poe grabs his arm, then asks Finn, "it's cool, right? What's going on? You're okay?"

"Sorry, I let myself in, they said you'd be right back --" Finn's jaw tightens. He's _making_ himself, Poe realizes, meet Luke's eyes. "I'm okay, nothing's wrong. Sorry."

"It. Is. Cool," Poe announces to all and sundry. He throws himself backward on the bed, bouncing a little, getting comfortable. He grins, a little exhilarated. Horniness is still jingling through him, and it is joined now by the straightforward pleasure of Finn being back in his quarters, like old times. When neither of them reply, he tosses his boot at Finn. "What's up?"

"Just got some intel --" Finn is _nervous_. His gaze keeps darting between the floor and Luke, only occasionally zipping past Poe. "I wanted to tell you about. But I'll come back. Right. I'll come back."

"Don't be stupid," Poe tells him. To Luke, he adds, grinning, as he pats the bed, "want to hang out? Scheme and plot? It's good foreplay, it's all sexy and _strategic_."

"Strategy never was my strong suit," Luke says and now he really does go.

"Man!" Poe calls after him, then sinks back down. "Shit."

"I should go," Finn says.

"And leave me totally alone? Thanks, pal, that would be _great_." Poe kicks him in the shin. "Sit. Tell me about intel."

They can't seem to talk about anything except work lately, but at least they can talk about that. Somehow, they still work great together.

At least there's that.

Even if he _isn't_ getting laid tonight.

"I'm not, am I?" he asks Finn, because he needs to clear his head, because nothing's quite working right, because he's a cranky dick. He was so happy, three seconds ago, and now everything's upside down again. "Getting laid tonight, I mean."

Finn's eyes widen. "That's not my call."

"No," Poe says, slipping down, throwing an arm over his eyes. "Of course it isn't. Tell me about the intel. Distract me."

-

Out at the far hangar, Poe finishes up some training on the old-style simulator. He likes it better than the newer VR arrays, which might be visually more accurate, but lack that particular terrifying thud-and-drop motion he associates with real flight.

He's a little nauseous, still, even after checking out and chewing through an entire ration bar. Suddenly, BB-8 goes skittering off to the entrance, chirruping all the way. He returns at a more sedate pace with Rey in tow.

"Here," Rey says, handing Poe a tiny circuit board, the size of maybe half his palm.

"What is this?"

"A circuit board."

Since their mission together, he's been getting better at talking to to her, but it looks like he has a ways yet to go. "Sorry, I mean, what do you want me to do with this? Why do you want me to have it?"

She has already turned to go, but she turns back now, huffing a breath to blow the hair off her forehead. "It's for BB-8."

"Oh," Poe says and drops the board into his front pocket. "Couldn't you just have installed it yourself?"

She grins at that, nodding rapidly, almost as if she's both grateful and relieved. "I wanted to! But Finn said --" She stops then, one dimple deepening, and thinks, before she continues. "He said I had to ask you first. That I _should_ ask you."

"That's weird," Poe says, sitting down now, gesturing for BB-8 to roll up between his legs. "BB-8 trusts you."

That gets a trill and bleep of agreement. 

Rey grins and crouches down. "That's what I told him," she says, squinting up at Poe, holding out her hand. He gives her back the circuit board. "But he didn't want me going around making assumptions."

"I guess that's a good point," Poe says, as she opens the panel to BB-8's secondary power and memory arrays. She works so quickly, so confidently, that it's almost entrancing. "But, man. You and BB-8, you've got your own thing. You don't have to go through me."

Agreeing, BB-8 chirps, then adds something about how unreliable Poe's emotions can make him, so in fact it's best _always_ to go through BB-8, rather than the other way around. Poe kicks him lightly for that. Rey smiles, ducking her head for a moment.

"He's obnoxious," Poe tells her when she's done, offering her a hand up. She squints at his hand then shrugs and accepts it. "But he's his own guy. We trust you."

Rey wipes her hands on the back of her breeches, nodding in that careful, thoughtful way she has that suggests she's all but memorizing this conversation.

"All right," she says finally. "Thank you." She doesn't move, however, so Poe waits. After a moment, tapping her fingers on BB-8's crown, she adds, "I trust you, too."

"Damn," he says and has to remind himself not to make a joke. "Thanks."

This shouldn't affect him quite like it is, as much as it is. Poe's sinuses burn a little, and so do the corners of his eyes, like he's back on Yavin at the height of pollen season. He rocks back on his heels, wondering if he should smile, or say something else.

"I'm going now," she says.

He waves back when she gets to the exit and waves at him.

-

Before they can meet their contact, Finn and Poe are stuck in lunar quarantine. The room is sterile, but manages to smell rank, probably from the various antibodies and immuno-bots getting pumped through the atmosphere.

There's nothing to do _but_ talk. It's hell.

"So," Finn says. "Skywalker? What's going on there?"

"Didn't we already --" Poe shakes his head when Finn simply lifts his brows, theatrically, as if he's _acting_ patient and, what's more, wants to make sure Poe knows that that's what he's doing. "Fine, what about him?"

"He's amazing," Finn says, "don't get me wrong. But he's so --"

Poe half-wants to draw this out, just to see if he can make Finn say it. Old. He's not sure that Finn _can_ , however, and it would be really mean.

So he just rubs his palms, which aren't sweaty but feel itchy all the same, up and down his thighs. "Don't know what to tell you."

"Just --" Finn tilts his head and squints a little. " _How_? Why."

"He wanted me."

Poe can't take the words back. He doesn't want to. He would like, however, to vanish himself. The words can stay; words are durable, sturdy things. They'll be just fine.

Finn rubs his chin, his jaw, then the entire bottom half of his face. Out of morbid, futile interest, Poe watches Finn watching him, back and forth, before he gets a surge of vertigo.

"That's a little --" Finn stops, shakes his head, and starts the rubbing sequence all over. "Man." He leans forward. Poe realizes that if Finn tries to touch him, tries to be _nice_ , he doesn't know what he'll do. "He didn't force you, did he?"

Poe starts laughing before Finn even finishes speaking. Loudly, half-hysterically, out of relief and surprise and the sheer, gorgeous _absurdity_ of that suggestion.

Even when Finn sits back, his expression shutting down and closing up, Poe can't stop laughing.

"He --! No, buddy. I was a full and enthusiastic participant in all activities, not to worry." When Finn looks away, his jaw going tight and lips pressing together, Poe's laughter drops out of him, just like that. "No, it was fine. It is fine. Sorry. Sorry for laughing."

"So that's it? You just - take anyone up on their offer?"

"Sure, why not?"

Finn's mouth twitches.

Poe opens his arms, stretching them wide, and shrugs before folding his arms behind his head. "Not _anyone_ , no. I have some sense of --" He kicks the leg of his chair, trying to think of the word. Decorum? Discretion? Not distinction, but a little like that.

"Self-respect," Finn says.

"Not that, no." Poe stands up, looking around for BB-8 before he remembers that he's back on base, then pats his pockets so his hands have something to do. "That's not the issue."

"Where're you going?" Finn sounds amused. "We're stuck here."

"I don't really --" Poe stops and sighs. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "I don't have to explain myself to you. That's not --"

"Why doesn't it work like that the other way around?"

Finn sounds so quiet, almost cautious, that Poe has to move slightly closer to make sure he's heard. "What are you talking about?"

Finn looks up at him, calm as anything. "Everything I do, how I do it, even how I _think_ , that's been up for you to look at and talk about and worry about."

Poe wants to sit down. No, lie down. Have a drink. Be anywhere, feeling anything else, than be here. "Finn, that's different. I mean, that isn't --"

Finn just blinks up at him, wide brown eyes, thoughtful face. He looks _so_ patient. He'll be able to outwait any amount of Poe's avoidance and bullshit and usual crap. 

"Shit." Poe scrubs his palms over his face and sways a little on his feet. "I asked about all that, I worried, because --" He swallows and has to look away, just to focus. Looking right at Finn is not helping with finding the right words. "I care about you. I didn't want you to be so messed up. _So hurt_. It was killing me, thinking about --" He stops, breaks, when, out of the corner of his eye, he sees that Finn is smiling. "What?"

"Works like that the other way around, too," Finn says. "That's all."

"But I'm not --" He sees his hands moving in front of him, circling air, and doesn't quite know what he's doing. I'm not like you. What Finn said doesn't make any sense, and, then, the next second, he understands. Poe doesn't believe it, but he understands. He wants to sag, let go. Just lie down. "Yeah? Really?"

"Yeah," Finn says, nodding. Then, out of nowhere, out of the fucking _blue_ , he adds, "What if _I_ was the one making you an offer? Wanting you? What would you say then?"

Poe points at him, shaking his head, smirking. This, this he can handle a lot more easily. "I'd say you were trying to prove a point. Not fair."

"No, but it isn't because of that." Finn drums his fingers on his knees, then glances back up. "What if _I_ wanted you?"

"I'd say you were bullshitting me."

"Come _on_ , man --" Finn sighs. "You don't think it's possible?"

"Anything's _possible_ ," Poe says, pacing now, tension creeping through every muscle, twisting him up. "It's a big galaxy."

"What if you wanted me, then?"

He stops short. "I'm not that much of an asshole, I promise."

Finn goes back to shaking his head. 

"What?" Poe asks. Leaving Finn alone, sparing him whatever shitty, gross, selfish things Poe wants to do to-with-for-on him is just about the only decent quality he still has left. "I'm not a very good person, but --"

"You're a great person, don't be stupid," Finn says dully. "Looks like I'm the --. No, fuck that." Poe is fairly sure he's never heard Finn swear before. "Don't smile at me!" Finn says, and Poe tries like hell to obey. "I'm not, not. Some sad broken charity case you have to --. Forget it."

"No, say it," Poe says. This is starting to feel inevitable. He's unsure what "this" _is_ , but it's happening and there's no getting away from it.

"You're being stupid," Finn says finally. "I don't know what to say. How to deal with this much stupid."

"I'm not --"

"Yeah, you are. Won't even admit you want me, or wanted me, or something. Stupid bullshit. Won't let anyone --"

The alarm sounds and the light over the door goes off. They're sprung from quarantine.

"Can we pick this up later?" Poe asks.

"Maybe," Finn says, tossing him his satchel. "Let's go."

-

They pose as data middlemen, willing to do dirty deals with mercs and hitmen on behalf of more respectable citizens who can't show their faces.

It's a great cover, actually. Poe had his doubts about whether Finn could tamp down his usual enthusiasm and sunny good nature, but the guy is a lot more flexible than Poe gave him credit for. Also, it might just be that being around Poe makes him dour enough to pass as a heartless mercenary. That possibility, likely as it is, isn't something Poe wants to reflect on all that much.

There they are, loitering in the darkest recesses of a regional spaceport - one that just _technically_ can be called "galactic" rather than "intrasystemic" because it hosts agricultural shipments from the next system over - dressed in old synth-leather, chewing actual matchsticks, looking about as disreputable as possible.

"Think we'd like to renegotiate," Finn tells their contact, a wheezing Falleen with a serious eczema issue. "Got any leads on old-school computing installations?"

Poe keeps his eye on the alien. He's a twitchy little bastard.

"Maybe," the Falleen says. "How do I know you can pay?"

Finn catches Poe's eye and tips up his chin. "How does he know we can pay?"

Poe snorts, then hocks a big wad of spit just past the alien. "We can pay."

"Right, so you say," he replies. "What I'm asking is, how do I know that?"

"Playing rough, huh?" Finn asks.

Poe sneers. "Maybe he likes it rough."

The Falleen just sighs. "I don't know what bizarre kink you two are working up here, but I'm a businessman. Show me some payment, I'll see about getting you what you need."

Maybe they're having a bit too much fun at this.

Finn elbows Poe. "Give the man a deposit."

"Yeah, yeah, boss," Poe mutters, playing a cowed subordinate. He winks at the alien as if to say _what can you do?_ as he transfers two thousand credits from his burner account. "Better?"

The Falleen checks his data-cuff, then nods. "That's a start. What sort of installation were you interested in?"

"Not interested so much as...curious," Finn says, barely paying any attention. He's _good_ at this, at making the marks offer more than they intend to. People want to help him; it's the sort of talent you can't learn. Either you possess it, or you don't. 

"Mainframe? Microtech?"

Poe glances at Finn, and Finn nods fractionally. "Mainframe sounds fun. Retro. What've you got?"

And that is how they obtain the defense codes for the mainframe at a fraction of the estimated cost.

-

He knows what Luke's going to say as soon as he arrives. It's very early, barely light out, when Poe brings in the X-Wing from a routine defense and recon run. He's flying well enough the past several days that he's even allowed out without a babysitter.

Luke's waiting for him outside the hangar, robed in black, slight as sapling.

Poe tries to kiss him - he might know what's coming (it doesn't take a gram of precognition or force sensitivity), but that's not going to stop him trying, for however long he has left. Luke touches his neck, kisses him with dry, closed mouth, before he pulls away.

"I'm not what, who, you want," Luke says. "Not really."

"I _do_ ," Poe tells him. "You are. I just want --" He rocks back on his heels. "I want a lot of things."

He doesn't understand why he has to choose. He might not _deserve_ anything, but that's never stopped him from wanting.

Luke tips up his hood and slips his arm through the crook of Poe's elbow. His body, the way he uses it to come close and somehow lead and reassure simultaneously, is so much like Leia's that it's uncanny. He shouldn't be the one comforting Poe, but here he is. He's too kind.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," Luke continues, but then, at least, has the decency to smile and shrug. "That's not completely true, of course. But _you_. You have nothing to be afraid of."

"I thought that was my problem," Poe says. "Too reckless."

Luke tips his head against Poe's shoulder. He smells like ozone and sap, and doesn't react when Poe kisses the top of his hood. He probably doesn't feel it. "Recklessness is a manifestation of fear. Of flight."

"Profound," Poe says, not sure if he's joking or not.

Luke pulls away. "And you don't do profound."

Poe reaches for him, just managing to graze his fingers over Luke's elbow. "I wish I did."

-

He and Finn leave at next moonrise for the Imperial mainframe. Their skiff is disguised as a mercantile ship, flying under a Corellian flag; Finn's been practicing a Corellian accent just in case they get detained.

He's truly terrible at it; this is possibly - probably, Poe thinks - the first thing Finn's proved bad at. 

But they aren't detained, not even questioned, at the system boundary. They proceed, unhurriedly, to the lumpy little moon and come down without incident near an old quarry whose radioactivity should shield their presence and transmissions.

There aren't as many guards in the facility as their intelligence suggested. That doesn't mean, however, that this is easy.

Yet Finn insists on talking about things.

"I've been thinking about you and me," Finn says again. "Are you listening?"

They're seven meters from the first guard station. "Can't this wait?"

"I want to talk to you," Finn says, like it's just that simple.

"I think we need to focus --" Poe trips an alarm then, _of course_ he does. Three guards thud into the passage. "On this! Them!"

"We've got this." Finn kneecaps the closest guard and kicks his blaster away. "What I want to say, though --"

"This isn't a great time." Poe has a wild, irrational idea about what Finn wants to say. He's been a lot friendlier in the last little while, sweeter, like he used to be. "Behind you!"

Finn whirls, ducking a blow and driving the butt of his blaster into the guy's midsection, dropping him just like that.

He's _damn_ good at this. Efficient, graceful, thorough without a trace of sadism. Poe could watch him work all day.

"Let me say it --" 

"This really isn't the time!" Poe shouts as he elbows one guard in the throat and grabs the man's blaster as he crumples down.

When Finn shoots the alarm panel, finally, blissfully, the shrieking siren cuts out. "It's never a good time!"

"Fine, good point." Poe zip-ties the dropped guard and pats him down for extra weapons and hidden comlinks. "But this is a particularly terrible time."

There are more guards rushing down the far passage. Poe shrinks against the wall and signals Finn to do the same. Finn, however, charges the entrance, blaster firing, and takes out three of the five.

"Just tell me you've thought about it," Finn yells, dragging the other two by their collars over to Poe. "About you and me."

Oh, _fuck_ , Poe's wildest illogic is now coming true.

Poe pats them down, empties their blasters, and kicks the weapons to the far corner. There's nothing to do but be honest. Nothing - except everything - to fear, right, Luke? "I'd be lying if I said no."

Grinning, Finn holds out his hand and pulls Poe to his feet. One of the guards stirs, snarling, making to grab Poe's leg. Finn stomps on his arm and something cracks.

"That's all I wanted to hear," Finn says. He hugs Poe hard, too briefly, before heading down the next passage.

Poe swipes at the sweat on his face and tries to focus. They have plenty of time to get to the mainframe but someone else is bound to notice the alarm's sudden silence.

He keeps his voice low, though as far as he knows, they're alone for the moment. "What about Rey? You guys are good together. Really good together."

Finn has paused at the corner. He looks around it, then back to Poe. As he always does, Finn smiles at her name, but his expression changes, quickly goes grave. "Rey's my friend. I love her, I love her _a lot_. And I love you --"

"No," Poe says. "Don't even say --"

"And I love you," Finn continues, more loudly, even authoritatively. They round the corner and now their boots are clanging on a metal catwalk. If it weren't for the noise, Poe's not convinced he'd know he was still moving, still inhabiting his own skin, not after what Finn just said. "But. But I don't want to put my mouth all over Rey, not like I do with you."

"That's.... Is that supposed to be romantic?" Poe holsters his blaster and grabs the ladder ahead of him to climb hand over hand.

"Maybe?" Finn peers up after him. "No idea. Just how I feel."

"You feel cannibalistic?" Poe pulls himself up to the next level and rolls out of the way, then waits for Finn to climb up. When Finn's head appears, Poe adds, "I don't know, I must be pretty stringy by now. Mutton, basically."

Finn narrows his eyes; his mouth tightens, but he doesn't say anything.

Poe cracks his neck, then asks, "So what else do you want to do to my body?"

"Shut up," Finn says. He doesn't even sound angry, just tired. He peers around Poe. The mainframe is just ahead, blinking and whirring like any other, non-world-ending machine.

"No, I mean it." Poe hears what a jackass he's being but it's like he can't intervene. He _could_ , but how?. "Or you could demonstrate! Make it a whole hands-on, in-depth learning experience. I'd be _so_ down for that."

"Man --" Finn is getting more impatient. Poe has two, maybe three, more wisecracks before Finn loses all patience. "Come _on_."

Below them, several levels down, three more guards appear, circling the mainframe's tower. Finn catches Poe's eye and holds up three fingers.

Poe shakes his head and points at the tower.

"Guards," Finn says through gritted teeth.

"Explosives," Poe says, equally tensely.

They stare at each other. When neither blinks, they finally shoot stone-data-snake for it. Two turns, they each shoot data. On the next, Finn gives snake to Poe's data. Snake swallows data, so he wins.

"You were right, though," he whispers, bouncing on his heels. "Explosives, then run. Forget the guards."

" _Thank you_ ," Poe replies, clapping Finn on the shoulder. "A little acknowledgement, that's all I ask."

Finn leans against him to dig the charges out of his pack. His soft hair brushes Poe's chin, then his lips when Poe ducks his head. His shoulder, his whole body, fit Poe, right up against him, just like that. Simple as that.

So simple Poe thinks he might pass out.

"Fine," Poe says, attaching the charges one by one. He holds up five fingers and runs for the exit, Finn chasing him. The guards below fire wildly up through the catwalk after them.

Finn hits the remote trigger when Poe's fingers finish counting down. They dive through the passage through which they came, Poe tackling Finn, and slide out of the blast range.

"Fine what?" Finn asks when the worst of the debris has finished raining down. They're running for their skiff. 

"Fine, you're right," Poe shouts back, pushing Finn up into the ship, bouncing, hurrying, panting before hoisting himself into the cockpit. His ears are ringing, his side is burning. He should probably work out more if he's going to be out on missions this much. Maybe he's no longer just a joystick jockey. "You were right about _everything_."

The engines are charged, because BB-8 is a veritable _saint_ and galactic hero, and they're in the hyperlane, hooting with relief before Poe can even catch his breath.

Finn kisses him then, arm clutching Poe's neck, smashing Poe's nose against his cheek, grunting, rearranging, knocking teeth painfully together, until finally, _finally_ , they get the angle halfway right. Then it's just too much, more than enough.

It's wild and irrational, sure. But it's also just right, fitted right and figured out. Finn's mouth is wet, open, _searching_. He tastes so good, how the hell does he even _taste_ good?

Something fiery surges up Poe's side, like the worst cramp he's ever had.

Finn nearly whimpers when Poe breaks the kiss, but it has to be done. There's no avoiding this. "BB-8, protocol Shara, Stampede-Hello-Alien-Resume-Alien." He drops one last quick kiss on Finn's forehead. "Buddy, you're going to be okay. BB-8's got this. Just stay cool, I love --"

Finn clutches him by the shoulders, shouts his name.

Poe's eyes close, he feels his head fall back. "Think I got shot. No, definitely. Got shot, ow."

 _That's_ why his side hurts so bad. He's not out of shape, he's just dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Third and final chapter will be up tomorrow. ♥


	3. The heart must rally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I don't want to be a soldier,/I don't want to go to war"
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> Final chapter.

When he comes to, everything hurts. That much, he's used to. But this med-center is cramped, and quiet, and he remembers the scene through that big viewport _very_ well. He saw that pond iced over when he was here at twelve after breaking his arm; he saw it flooding its banks that rainy season he spent a week here with Corellian flu he got from the exchange student; he _didn't_ see it the time he got knocked out after hitching the Lobins' old star-yacht and was blind for several days.

So the protocol worked: BB-8 did great, got the skiff right where they needed to be. Kes and Finn are standing over him, one on each side of the gurney.

"Hey," Poe says, before realizing just how dry and awful his mouth is. 

Finn passes him a foil packet of rejuvi-liquid and he sucks it down.

"So, right," he continues. "Finn, Dad. Dad, this is Finn, you've been wanting to meet him."

Over him, they exchange significant glances. Finally, Kes nods and Finn smiles gently and says, "You've been out for seven hours. We already met."

Kes just squeezes Poe's arm.

"Sure," Poe says and crumples up the empty packet. "Still want to be polite. Wasn't raised in a Bantha pen, was I?"

"That would've been an improvement, right?" Kes asks and Poe's mouth hurts but he grins back anyway.

Kes's eyes are disappearing in the crinkles at the sides, and he looks sad and happy all at once. His cropped hair is almost all the way silver now. When the hell did that happen?

"BB-8?" Poe asks and Finn's grinning now, too, then all the more widely when BB-8 beeps and knocks against the leg of the bed a couple times to shake it. "Good job, buddy. Thanks for getting us home."

-

When they get back to the house, Poe finds that Finn's already been billeted in his old room. 

"That's all right, isn't it?" Finn asks, moving to pick up his jacket and holster from where they're hanging on the peg next to the door. "I can --"

"You're not going anywhere," Kes tells him and, behind Kes's back, Poe just shrugs and rolls his eyes. "We been over this. Poe prefers company when he sleeps."

Finn looks back and forth between Kes and Poe. He doesn't seem shocked so much as baffled. 

Poe closes his eyes for a very long moment, then keeps them closed. "Thanks, Dad."

"No worries, kiddo." Kes shoulder checks him on the way past. "Get some rest. Finn, come help with supper in a bit?"

"Yes, sir," Finn tells him as Poe lies back on the wide, lumpy bed.

He stares up at the mismatched angles of the ceiling - Kes tried to put in dormer windows, then abandoned the idea, so no edge or angle meets or makes sense up there. After a bit, Finn sits down gingerly on the edge of the bed. Poe reaches for him, blind, and manages to tug on the hem of his shirt.

"C'mere," he says. 

He hears Finn take a breath, then lie down. "You should rest."

Poe turns to look at him. "I'm not going to ravish you right this minute, man."

Finn grins and shifts a little closer. "I'd like to see you try, but that's probably against doctor's orders. Med-droid's orders."

"Never let a droid run my sex life before," Poe says, then reconsiders. "Okay, that's not true, but BB-8's an exception."

"But of course," Finn says. He drops his eyes, then moves his hand over Poe's, turning it, pressing their palms together, interlacing their fingers. "You scared the shit out of me, you know that?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry." Poe squints up at the ceiling again. He tried to paint the galaxy up there when he was about eleven, but didn't quite understand proportions, so the Yavin gas giant is about twenty percent of the entire space. "Really wanted to keep kissing you."

Finn laughs a little. "Your priorities are so out of whack."

"They really are," Poe says. "I guess. You're a good kisser, though."

"Thanks." 

When Finn doesn't say anything else for a while, Poe looks back at him. "Sorry."

This close, Finn's eyelashes look even longer, softer. He blinks, then says, "What for?"

"Where do I start?"

His smile tilts up on one side and Finn elbows Poe's arm. "Don't be stupid."

"Aw, man," Poe says and shifts until he can rest his cheek against Finn's shoulder. He can smell his dad's lemon detergent on Finn's shirt - it must be Kes's shirt, actually, now that he thinks about it, a faded purple that probably used to be garish as all get out - but below that a faint trace of _Finn_ , whatever that is. "But I'm so good at that."

He doesn't mean to fall asleep. 

But he wakes up with a blanket pulled over him, his boots off, and the dark filling up the room. His stomach twists and growls as he pushes himself up to sit. For a long, woozy moment, he doesn't know where he is, but then he hears Finn's laugh from downstairs and smells food. Real food, his dad's stewed greens and sour flatbread, so now his stomach hurts even more. 

It hurts, standing up, but after a few breaths, he has his balance back well enough to pick his way down the steep stairs. He keeps one palm pressed to the wall the whole way. Kes and Finn are eating inside the kitchen, facing each other across the tiny, rickety table. Kes is laughing at something Finn's recounting; Finn has his arms spread and he's trying to do an accent again.

"You saved some for me, right?" Poe asks from the bottom step. Damn it, that was supposed to be jovial, but instead he sounds croaky and plaintive.

"Latecomers will not be served," Kes says, hanging his head sorrowfully. "You know the rules. My hands are tied."

"Man --" Poe stops when he realizes Kes is joking. "I'm _injured_. Don't fuck with me like that."

"What better time?" Kes cuffs him as Poe slips by to wedge himself into the tiny space between the table and the kitchen counter. "When you can't fight back, that's when I get you. Get you _good_."

Finn is smiling, watching them. Poe knows that's not his completely comfortable smile, but it isn't a blank, overly polite one, either. If anything, it is friendly but slightly confused. Honestly, that is one of the better reactions Poe's gotten from someone he's brought home.

Poe bangs his fists on the edge of the table and chants, "Feed me, feed me."

"Feed yourself," Kes tells him, holding the tagine over his head, out of reach.

Poe opens his mouth like a baby lizard and croaks. "Daaaaaaaad."

Finn's laughing now, liberating the tagine from Kes's cruel grip, twisting around to grab an empty plate, and spooning it out. "Here --"

"Thank you," Poe says primly. He sketches a loose salute in Finn's general direction. "I must say, it's reassuring, _terrifically_ so, to see that _someone_ manages to be civilized around here."

"Well, it sure as hell isn't either of you," Finn says. As soon as he says it, there's half a second where his eyes widen and he freezes, before Kes just about shakes the rafters with his guffaw. He slaps Finn on the back hard enough to push him halfway to the table.

After dinner, Kes breaks out a bottle of sweet fruit wine, another present Poe sent, a while back now. He serves it with those jelly turnovers Poe used to spend his entire allowance on in one go.

Poe's technically not allowed to drink while he's healing, so he only gets two glasses. BB-8 objects to even that, but Kes overrules him. Their relationship is as strained as ever; Poe doesn't hold out much hope that they'll ever find common ground.

When Kes starts to clear his throat, getting ready to make a toast, Poe puts in, as quickly - but casually - as he can, "Hey, Dad, sing that drinking song of yours. Bet Finn's never heard it."

Finn's holding his glass of wine almost tentatively, as if he's not quite sure whether to sip, put it down, or raise it higher. "How's it go, sir?"

Kes squares his shoulders and clears his throat all over again. He has to hum a few bars to get the rhythm, then, suddenly, he's booming out in his gravelly but syrup-rich baritone:  
I don't want to be a soldier,  
I don't want to go to war;  
I'd rather hang around  
Coruscant underground --

"Dad," Poe says, as loudly as he can. "No, no --"

It's not going to work, so he might as well join in.

Living on the earnings of a high born lover;  
Don't want a blaster up my arsehole,  
Don't want my bollocks shot away,  
I'd rather stay on Coruscant,  
Merry old Coruscant,  
And fuck it all sideways  
And roger all my bleeding life away,  
Gorblimey!

"Oh, shit," Poe says when Kes's voice dwindles away and he sits back down, tossing back his wine like it's the cheapest shot on Nar Shaddaa. Finn is just staring at Kes, mouth a little open, clutching his wine in both hands. " _Dad_. I meant the 'booze is always there' one."

"Which one?" Kes pours himself another glass. He has two red spots high on his cheeks and some sweat on his forehead.

Poe jabs Finn's arm, waves his hand in front of Finn's eyes. " _Fuck_ , I think you broke him. Nice job."

"He's fine," Kes says, but doesn't sound entirely convinced.

Finn's smile starts to widen, and gets bigger, and bigger, until he's beaming at Kes and raising his glass in a quick toast. "That was _amazing_. You have to teach me that one." He turns to Poe. "Are there more? What's the 'booze is always there' one?"

Relieved, way more than he knows how to say, Poe shakes his head. "Just a highly inappropriate little ditty Kes and my uncle made me sing whenever I brought them their drinks."

Kes winks at Finn. "There's a dance, too. Whole number."

After moonset, when Kes is long asleep and snoring enough to rattle every rickety beam in the place, Poe's lying back in bed next to Finn. They've been making out, which alone is enough to make his head spin, but Finn stops them before it goes any further.

"You're hurt," he says, pressing his palm against Poe's chest like he's blocking him from entering a restricted area. Which, now that Poe thinks about it, he _is_ , in a way. "What if something happens?"

"What, I burst my stitches? Pass out again?" He lowers his voice, aiming for rough and sexy but probably coming down at colicky. "Rock your world?"

"You're injured," Finn says.

Poe punches his shoulder. "I don't even have stitches. It's all bacta-sealed. I'm just sore, more than anything." He pulls himself closer, hand on Finn's jaw, trying to kiss him again. "But I bet I could be distracted --"

Then Kes hollers in his sleep and they both freeze.

 _This_ is a big reason why it's strange and difficult to come home. Poe says as much, but Finn laughs at him. "He loves you."

"Yeah, I guess." Poe rolls one shoulder to loosen it and sucks the inside of his lip, imagining he can still taste Finn. "He likes to tease me. _A lot_."

"Yeah, but that's -- that's a dad thing, right? They make up dumb nicknames for you and tease you mercilessly and make you wish you'd never been born. All that kind of thing."

"You're thinking of Solo," Poe says and rolls on his side, throwing one leg over Finn's.

"A little?" Finn shrugs. He cups Poe's kneecap and works his thumb up and down the tendon on the side. "Yeah, okay. He's the closest I ever got to one."

"Okay, well. Take Solo and turn it right the hell up, that's Kes."

Finn's shaking his head. "He's really great, man."

"I'm not saying he's not great! He _is_ great. I'm saying he's --" Poe runs out of words. He pokes his chin into Finn's shoulder and exhales noisily. "Just. Don't take him too seriously."

It was one thing, Poe sees now, to become the topic of gossip back on base. For a while, he really wasn't himself, just a name and cluster of anecdotes and qualities that actually didn't have all that much to do with _him_. Pilot, failure, slut, whatever.

But Kes. Kes does know him, that way that some people know you better than you ever will yourself. And it's not just because he caught Poe as he was born, and changed his diapers and taught him how pee standing up and always to wash _under_ the foreskin. It's not just because Poe slept in his bed with him for almost a year after Shara died or because they have the same favorite holo-comedians. It's all of that, but it's also just Kes, watching him, looking out for him, even when Poe didn't know where the fuck he was going.

He still doesn't know, and Kes probably knows that even better than Poe.

"Way I see it," Finn says after a little bit, and he tugs on the hair on Poe's leg for emphasis, "you give as good as you get."

"Because I have to!" Poe says. He sighs again, long-sufferingly. "He leaves me no choice."

"Sure, buddy. Okay."

Poe kisses the skin right above Finn's collar and tightens his hold around him, both arm and leg. "I'm glad you came."

"Didn't leave me much choice," Finn says, but he sounds like he's teasing. "Not with your top-secret droid protocols and getting secretly shot and all."

"Hmf," Poe says, entirely intelligently. "There's a spaceport half a day away by foot, you know."

Finn shifts a little closer and presses his face against the top of Poe's head. "I'm good here. Think I'll stick around."

-

Poe has to wonder whether he was out much longer than seven hours. Kes and Finn are already basically best friends. That kind of thing can't happen so quickly.

Except, with Finn, somehow it always does.

He just _fits_ , here, with Kes, and in Kes's house. He knows where the compost goes, how to pump the well, why you always warn the rest of the household before turning on the oven. Poe's parents were a lot more _enthusiastic_ than knowledgeable about house building. This place has an untold number of quirks, things that have only gotten stranger and more unpredictable with the passage of time.

Just like you, Kes!  
Watch it, kiddo.

-

In the morning, they go on a hike, ostensibly because Finn wants to see more of Yavin. Poe knows it's because he needs fresh air and some exercise, even before BB-8 reminds him to take his supplements and stretch before the hike. Kes waves them off with the excuse that someone has to hang around to feed the livestock.

The livestock is one old goat-lizard named Nana who's so toothless that she only eats jam these days, but Finn offers to stay and help before leaving.

"I think I got it," Kes tells him. "You go on, I'll probably be all right."

"Yeah, if she doesn't gum you to death," Poe points out. In the cold season, Kes brings Nana inside and lets her sleep in front of the stove. Poe suspects, but has yet to be able to prove, that Kes lets her come upstairs, too. "Or drown you in drool."

"Animal husbandry is more an _art_ than a technique that any big-dicked flyboy can pick up," Kes says loftily. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

Poe flips him off and Kes docks him ten imaginary points from the highly intricate system he claims to keep in his head.

Finn's watching them again. Maybe it ought to make Poe nervous, but instead it just makes him feel looser, happier. They head off across the Lobins' land and into the old-growth forest.

"Is it strange --" Finn starts to say, then stops and shakes his head. "Of course it is, never mind."

"What were you going to say?"

Finn squints up into the canopy. Gold and green light moves over his face in soft lozenge shapes, shifting, melting. He's wearing another of Kes's shirts, a gray one today, a little too small for his broad shoulders. 

"It's strange," Finn says after a long pause, "but I'm going to miss your dad. When we go back, I mean."

"That's not strange," Poe says, scrambling up a low bank that turns out to be a long-ago fallen tree. Shreds of bark and moss rain down under his feet. "It's a pretty standard psychological phenomenon that you come to identify with, even grow fond of, your captors. However obnoxious they are."

"Funny," Finn says, loping around the tree to offer Poe a hand down. "Why do you keep _doing_ that?"

Poe's about to refuse the hand when his foot slips a little and the soreness in his side spikes for half a blinding moment. Then he realizes that, as usual, Finn knows better. He grasps Finn's hand, lets him half-lift Poe down to the ground.

"Do what?" He grasps both of Finn's shoulders, just for a second, and darts in for a kiss.

Finn sees him coming and leans out of reach. "Make fun of your dad." 

He hasn't let go of Poe's hand yet.

"I --" Poe swallows. "That's just what we do. How we are." He thinks then of Kes's holo-messages - not just the latest one, but over the years. They've always been like that, almost brutally clear-eyed and heartfelt. Sure, he's a jackass in person, but Poe could probably try for a little less obnoxiousness. "No. How I am."

Poe shakes his head and exhales. 

"What?" Finn asks, voice gentle. "Are you hurting?"

That would be funny, so significant and redolent with layers of meaning as to be almost awkward, but Poe waves him off. Instead, turning back to the faint trail, he says, "You're better at being his kid than I ever was."

"That's bullshit." Finn's picking up _all sorts_ of salty language while he's here.

"Nah," Poe says, lifting his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face. "I'm just glad I could bring you together. Like it was meant to be. Warms the heart, you know?"

"Man --"

"I'm kidding." Poe turns to face Finn. "Sorry. I really was kidding."

Finn still looks uneasy. "I don't want you to think --"

"Forget it." Poe's hands are sweaty, too; he rubs them down the sides of his trousers, but nothing helps. "Please?"

"Okay," Finn says, still taking care.

They approach the main old temple, the famous one from holo-cards and guest star in stirring tales of the alliance. Poe tries to point out where the rebels erected temporary hangars, where Mon Mothma's tent was pitched, or Ackbar's private wading pool. He doesn't remember very well, despite coming here every year, sometimes twice a year, on school field trips. He's considering making it up, but it feels wrong to lie about this, even if it's to impress Finn.

Finally, BB-8 interrupts him and projects surveillance holos and old personal stills across the temple facade. 

Poe's reduced to translating his own history.

"You doing okay?" Finn asks when they've done a full circuit of the temple grounds. "How's your side?"

"I'm good," Poe says, then, when Finn frowns, adds, "I am. Not just saying that."

"Are you sure?"

"If I were bullshitting, you'd be able to tell, and then you'd get mad, and I'd need to apologize," Poe says. "Not worth the effort."

When Finn frowns, the skin over his nose puckers more deeply on the left side than the right. His brows draw together and curve upward. "That's --"

"It's a great reason," Poe says, dropping to a crouch, then falling back on his ass. With some embarrassing trouble, he ends up leaning against a big rock. He reaches for Finn's hand to tug him down. "Why waste time and energy on that when I could be making out with you?"

Finn's frown tightens, then vanishes, and he's grinning again, sinking gracefully down next to Poe. "That's actually a pretty compelling argument."

"Thanks," Poe says. "I've been working it out. Might need some testing, but it's close enough for government work. Resistance work. One of those."

Finn shifts until he's sitting perpendicular to Poe, one leg tangled up in Poe's, the other bent. He's drawing Poe over, hands gentle on his waist, kissing him about as softly as the breeze is blowing.

"C'mon, pal," Poe says, hand on Finn's chest, bunching up the shirt in his fingers. "I got shot, I'm not _broken_. Put some heat into it."

Then, far too late, it occurs to him that maybe Finn doesn't want to. Maybe he's already reconsidered everything, now that things are getting better and he can really see what it might be like to be with Poe. Maybe he's just hanging around until Poe's healed up and ready to head back to D'Qar; it's always cheaper to travel together, after all. He already said he'd miss Kes; he's probably halfway back to base already.

"Never mind." Poe stills and closes his eyes for a second. "Sorry, I --"

Finn's hands tighten on his waist, all but dragging Poe up against him, and his kiss goes open and wet and _hard_. He's pushing up Poe's shirt, fingertips skating over the bacta seal, then digging into Poe's ribs, holding him, kissing him so hard that there's not nearly enough air to breathe.

"Sorry," Finn says, face against Poe's neck. "I don't want to --"

"No, go right ahead," Poe tells him, "this is good, I want you to --"

He struggles up onto one knee and twists until he's facing Finn, plastering himself over his chest, kissing the side of Finn's neck, the tender skin across his throat.

"Poe, I can't --" Finn's fighting to stay still; somehow Poe can feel the trembles running through him. His voice is strained, a little high. 

"Of course you can," Poe says immediately, then, late _again_ , realizes he doesn't actually know what Finn means. "What's wrong?"

Finn pulls him yet closer, rocking his hips, and Poe thrusts back. They're both hard, getting harder, but while Poe's almost panting, Finn looks serious, almost upset.

"Nothing's wrong," Poe tells him, and reaches between them, cupping Finn gently, kissing him again. "I'm not going to be an asshole this time, I promise."

"No, it's not that," Finn says, laughter in his voice. He takes a breath. "You weren't an _asshole_ , you were great. Weird and lecturing, but great. It's --"

"What is it?" Poe has to slow down, but even as he tells himself that, he's stroking his knuckles down Finn's fly, kissing his neck, breathing hard. 

Finn eases onto his back, bringing Poe with him, over him. "I --" He's biting his lip, his hips rocking up against Poe's hands, his eyes gone wide.

"I don't want to scare you," Poe says, as carefully as he can, taking another breath almost between each word, rearranging until he's straddling Finn's left thigh. 

Finn's voice is more breath than language. "No?" 

"But I really want --" Poe kisses down into Finn's mouth, letting his own hips ride Finn's leg fast and dirty, until Finn's palming Poe's ass and pulling him down. "I _really_ want this. You, I mean."

"I know," Finn says and he's smiling, he has been smiling this whole time, but this expression is the biggest, brightest yet. "Maybe not as much as I do, though."

Poe braces his hand on Finn's chest and pushes himself up a little. Finn's fingers curl into Poe's waistband and hold him from going farther.

"We could totally test that," Poe says. "Make it a competition. Several rounds, just to be sure. Best of eleven?"

"Or not," Finn says, softly, his eyes half-closed. But he's looking up at Poe, shadows playing over his face, his smile never dimming, and there's a twig and lots of leaf pieces in his hair, arrayed around his head like a crown.

"Or not," Poe agrees. He kisses Finn one more time, then adds, "I guess we should wait til we're indoors, right?"

"Probably," Finn says but just tightens his grip. 

BB-8 tells them to get going; Poe needs another booster and they both need to eat.

"See?" Poe says, finally, reluctantly, standing up. His balance takes another moment or two to return; during the interval, his skull is hollow, nearly airborne save for his spine, and he has to lean against Finn. "The droid knows what's up, sex life and all."

-

Kes left them a note announcing sudden emergency jaunt into town, for no doubt entirely manufactured reasons. They have the house to themselves, try not to burn it down, enjoy yourselves. Poe can just about perfectly see him starting to write don't do anything I wouldn't do, then shaking his head ruefully and _chuckling_.

There's also a terse message from Statura, inquiring whether Poe might be at all interested in rejoining his squadron at some time in the near future, and a longer, kinder one from Leia. One for Finn from Rey, and he takes that in the kitchen while Poe washes up outside.

"She okay?"

Finn's smiling as he hefts himself up backwards onto the edge of the well. "She floated Threepio for almost five minutes."

Poe whistles as he lifts the bucket over his head and dumps the water out, rinsing off Kes's harsh old-man soap. "Maybe next time she can float him right into a deep cavern. Out past atmo."

Laughing, Finn strips off his shirt, then climbs back down to take off his trousers. "You sure it's okay to use all this water?"

"Man," Poe tells him, soaping up his back. "You pump it, you get to do anything you want with it." He pauses, one hand on the hollow of Finn's back, suds running down the planes of Finn's muscles. He's about to say something else - he just needs to get the phrasing right - when Finn twists around, looks over his shoulder.

"You're making that sexual, aren't you?"

"I was trying." Poe shrugs. "But you're really distracting me."

-

They could go up into the guest house loft. For some reason, which is probably obvious to anyone not Poe, especially someone not addled by lust and dumbstruck by horniness, he wants to be in his old room.

Finn groans in frustration and knocks his head back against the wall. Poe's already so aroused that the sound just torques him tighter, yanks his skin smaller and hotter.

"Hey," he manages to get out. "It's okay. We've got this."

Finn shakes his head, not meeting Poe's eyes. "I don't know --. I'm --."

"Hey," Poe says again, knocking their shoulders together. "It's fine. It's good. It's more than good."

His mouth burns, lips swollen from kissing, and he'd lay a thousand credits down that he's harder than he's ever been.

But he takes a breath, coaxes Finn to take one, then another. Slows them down, gets Finn back on steadier ground.

"Just go slow," he says when Finn exhales. "There's no hurry."

Finn chokes a little on his laugh, and catches Poe's eye. "Could've fooled me."

"Yeah, well." Poe laughs, too. The sound is warped, crushed, by the tightness in his chest and the dryness of his mouth. "It _feels_ like there's a hurry, I know. But there isn't. There really isn't."

Finn rolls his head against the wall, over to the far side, then back, coming to a stop to gaze at Poe. Sweat sparkles on his temple, across his upper lip. His mouth is beautiful, redder. His lids are heavy. "There really is."

"Just do what feels good," Poe says. "Just try it out. I'm right here."

Finn's tongue darts out, licks the corner of his mouth, then the sweat on his lip. Poe swallows at the sight. "Promise?"

"Hell, yes. I'm here. It's not pure and selfless, I promise."

Finn's eyelids flutter and he grunts as he puts his hand back on his cock. He doesn't look away, though; his gaze is fixed on Poe as he moves his hand roughly up and down. 

"Slow," Poe manages to get out. "See what feels good."

"This does," Finn says and groans. "This really does."

"Twist your wrist. Try that. Maybe..." He stops talking. He can't look away, enthralled by Finn's big, strong hand wrapped around his dick, pulling and twisting this way, then that, out of time with his ragged, broken breathing.

"Like this?"

It's not clear what he meant: _in this way?_ or _do you like this?_ Poe just nods, rolling his lips together to get the last taste of Finn's sweat, and spreads his own legs wider for temporary relief.

"Like _this?_ " Finn asks again, his voice cracking.

"Yeah," Poe says, kissing him softly. "Yeah, just like that."

Finn's hips push up, thrusting blind, and his eyes keep getting bigger and bigger. "Poe, I --"

"I got you." Poe should be patient, he should stay still, he should do everything right and gentle and well. Finn deserves that, Finn deserves the very best.

But Poe isn't made of stone. Whatever he's made of, it's a lot stickier and more _mobile_ than stone, _fluid_ , and just now, it's running over with need. He shushes Finn as he slides down to the floor and pushes his way between Finn's legs. Shushing and soothing, one hand roving across Finn's tight, sweaty belly.

"I got you, I want --" Poe looks up. He can't _lie_ but he doesn't know what the truth is. He just wants, and very, very much. 

Finn looks down at him, mouth half-open but almost smiling, looking at him like he'd never seen something like this. Like he never wants to stop seeing this.

He was a stranger, something Poe couldn't admit, couldn't even _see_ , but now he's gazing down at Poe like there's nowhere else to look, like he wants to be here. _Here_.

"I really want to," Poe says, and the groan that Finn gives when Poe pries Finn's death grip off his cock, followed by the higher one that comes when Poe grasps him instead -- he doesn't need words to know that this is acceptable. Better than acceptable.

His knees creak a little as he gets closer and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to get his mouth wet enough. He doesn't look away, though the angle and their proximity meant that he can't see all of Finn's face. 

He can see enough, though.

Finn touches Poe's forehead with sticky fingers, then his cheek, then his chin, and that's better than any invitation.

He dives in, foregoing style for sheer straightforward suction, closing his lips first around the ridge of Finn's cockhead, then moving down, inexorably down, dragging his mouth down the shaft until whorled hairs scrape his cheeks and chin. Finn shudders under him, his cock somehow swelling _more_ , tremors and heat shivering out into Poe's mouth, the tight seal of his cheeks and lock of his lips. The blunt head throbs past Poe's soft palate and scrapes a little, bending. Poe exhales through his nose, swallows once, then again, and suddenly Finn's holding him by the hair and his cock is in Poe's throat, and everything is too much -- too _full_ , too hot and wet, but also _dry_ and he just pushes further, swallows more, tries to move his trapped tongue a bit.

"Poe, I. I. _Poe_." Finn's babble accelerates, sputtering Poe's name again and again like it is a magic spell.

Poe wraps his arms around Finn's legs and holds himself in place, as Finn's ass lifts up and his balls spread against Poe's chin. His thrusts come faster, more ragged, than his words. When he shoots, he yanks at Poe's ear, pulling him to the right while his hips push left. His cock pops out of Poe's throat, jumping in his mouth like a fish on a line. Come swamps Poe's tongue and splatters his cheek, his eyelid.

He hangs there, sagging between Finn's legs, cheek on the twitching muscles in Finn's thigh, discreetly trying to breathe without freaking Finn out.

Finn is still shaking, gasping for air, but patting Poe's head and combing at his hair awkwardly.

"Hey," Poe says when he finally looks up. "Sorry about that. Kind of had to go for it."

Finn nods slowly. "Yeah. Wow. Okay."

"Okay?" Poe pulls back, running the back of his hand across his mouth, then scrubbing the heel against his sticky eye. "You sure?"

"Man..." Finn shakes his head, his smile widening. "I'm sure. I'm more than sure."

"Still don't know how to jerk off," Poe reminds him.

Finn shrugs. "I'm a pretty fast learner."

"You could practice on me."

Finn's smile _blossoms_ , just gets wider, taking over his face. "I don't think that's how it works."

"Try." He wanted that to sound firm, even a little urgent. _Sexy_. Instead it comes out like a whisper. A plea. 

Finn leans in, serious again, worried, touching Poe's shoulder. "You all right?"

Poe kisses him - Finn makes a pleased little _oof_ of surprise - and goes up on his knees, then scrambles onto the bed, shuffling around until he's got Finn back against the wall again. He twists around and slides down to sit against Finn's chest, bringing Finn's arms around his waist.

"What're you doing?" Finn whispers, right in Poe's ear, sending shivers rippling all the way through his body. When Poe brings their hands around to his front, down to his cock, Finn sucks in a sudden breath that whistles up Poe's spine and out his own mouth.

"Oh," Finn says and runs his palm up the underside of Poe's cock. "Whoa."

Poe wriggles a little, spreading his legs, trying not to just _buck up_ once and come like he's fourteen again. "Little harder, maybe?"

Finn wraps his free arm around Poe's chest and strengthens his grip on Poe's cock. "Like this?"

Poe locks his legs and nods. "Yeah. Good. Shit."

Finn's hand is just a little bigger than his own, and smoother in different places, and -- honestly, if it were a _claw_ , Poe would still be getting off on it right now. But it really does feel good. He drops his head, chin bouncing against his chest, to watch his dickhead emerge from, then duck down and hide within, Finn's fist. A little precum beads each time it pops up, smears on the side of Finn's hand, then shines there for a winking moment.

"You know I figured this out right away?" Finn sounds like he's laughing a little. "It's not exactly difficult."

"It's not about _this_ \--" Poe's hips rock up. "Okay, it's a little about this."

"A little?" Finn bites the side of Poe's neck, then squeezes his cock. "Feels like more than a _little_ to me."

"A _lot_ at the moment, fine. Yes."

"Quite a lot," Finn says and tugs harder, base to head.

"You're already making dick jokes," Poe says, arching with the touch. "I'm so proud."

Laughing, Finn's licking the back of his neck, jerking him hard and fast. Poe _twists_ with it, with his whole body, stretching, moaning. Finn tightens his free arm around Poe's chest and does it again, and again. Poe doesn't know if he's lit up from inside, spilling bright heat as Finn pulls it out, or if Finn's touch is introducing it _into_ Poe, fanning it more and more. 

His legs are tangled around Finn's, and he's sweating. He keeps trying to move around, kiss Finn, but his jaws clack shut on air. He grabs at Finn's broad, hard thighs, but his palms slip off, and then, finally, his back's arching even more and he's coming, shooting and bouncing. Finn's mouth is on the back of his neck, trying mightily to hold on, keep them together.

-

Nana is snorting and snuffling somewhere in the underbrush while the evening light trembles and holds, hesitating on the horizon. Kes isn't back yet, so Finn insisted on letting her out to graze. She's pretty confused, preferring to nap in her pen, but no one can resist Finn's encouragement, so here she is, making a racket and probably sliming everything with drool.

"Shouldn't we follow her?" Finn asks when Poe pulls out Kes's big, low lounge chair and flops down into it.

Poe stretches, savoring the actual, real-life warmth of relaxation and excellent sex still moving through him. Every so often a twinge happens, sparks back echoes of pleasure, and he can't help but want to _wallow_ in it, like -- well, like Nana in the ferns over there. "She moves about as fast as rock, she's fine."

There's no way they can fit in the chair together, but they try. They try _so hard_ , and it's a good thing they're loose and fucked-out, because otherwise, all the jostling, elbows in ribs, forearms trapped under asses, and skulls knocked into jaws, would hurt _a lot_. Instead, it's more like extreme tickling than anything painful.

Finally, they sort of make it work with Finn lying on his back and Poe partly wedged between the chair arm and Finn's torso, mostly splayed over him.

BB-8 has tucked himself under the back of the chair. He's in low-power mode, occasionally murmuring to himself as he backs up various subroutines. _Something_ is amusing in there, because every so often, he says, "oh, _that_ , ha".

The stars are coming out, one by one, directly overhead, then in pairs and threes, as the dark spills out from the sky's crown down toward the horizon. The trees ahead of them lose their detail, go from rustling complexes to flatter, darker masses.

"I'm hungry," Poe says eventually. Finn has his cheek against the top of Poe's head, and his breathing is slow and regular. Maybe he's asleep. 

He's not, or not all the way. He pokes the rise of Poe's hip and blows a soft raspberry into his hair. "Feed yourself, then."

"Exactly," Kes says, right behind the chair. He has his hands on the back and he's looking down at them, face shadowed, hair and shoulders picked out by silvery light from the house. "You tell him, son."

"Nice," Poe says, wiggling so he can crane his neck better and *see* Kes. "Ganging up on me worse than ever."

Finn starts to sit up, but Kes puts his hand on Finn's shoulder and presses him back. "Ground's good enough for me."

Poe doesn't have to look to know that Finn is frowning at that, torn.

"Here," Kes adds, dropping a fabric sack into Finn's lap; some packets spill out against Poe's leg. "Got you a variety, wasn't sure what you'd like." He settles on the lawn, resting against the foot of the chair and, because he's a _jackass_ , adds with a huge, showy wink, "Figured you two'd worked up a good appetite."

Poe groans and Finn becomes very interested in unwrapping the first packet of food. He's about to bite into it when Poe grabs it from and tips the bun out of the fern leaves it was steamed in. "Here, you don't want to eat the leaves, trust me."

Laughing, Kes launches into one of his favorite stories, the one where Poe confused sweet buns with dinner ones and ate four buns' worth of leaves before anyone noticed.

"Sick for _days!_ Turned the same color as the leaves, eyes just got big as platters, queasiest-looking baby you ever saw."

"I was _six_ ," Poe says.

Kes shrugs and bites his bun in half. He chews like Rey does, with his cheek bunched out, obvious pleasure all over his face. "Baby, what I said."

"You don't have to eat every single one," Poe tells Finn. "Some of them are pretty strong." He tries to liberate a fiery bean bun from Finn's hand, but Finn holds it out of reach, grinning, and Poe has to settle for another mild cheese.

"Now _that_ ," Kes says when all that's left of the heavy sack of food is a messy stack of steamed leaves and crumbs down the fronts of their shirts, and points at Finn, "that is an appetite I can respect."

"He had two more than I did," Poe says. "How is that so much better?"

"He just likes me better," Finn says. His voice is quiet, his mouth right against Poe's ear, and he's tightening his arm around Poe's waist. "Think you need to accept that and move on."

All Poe can do is snort and scowl.

Kes has turned over, leaning back on his elbows, head tipped against the chair, looking up at the sky. It used to bug Poe, how Kes could look at the same stars, year in and year out, and be _content_. Not bored out of his skull, not trapped and yearning for movement, not miserable, not in the least.

He'd told himself, back then, that clearly you just give up when you get old.

(He was _such_ an idiot. Kes was _maybe_ the age Poe is now.)

It's so dark here now that, until you squint, Kes is little more than a smudge with a slightly different texture than the grass beneath him and the woods beyond.

Poe kicks him lightly in the shoulder. "Thanks for dinner."

Kes shrugs. "Good thing my pension's still coming in. Eating me out of house and home and outbuildings here."

"I'll send you --"

"Shut up," Kes tells him and looks away. "I was kidding."

"Everyone's a fucking joker," Poe says, and rubs his cheek against Finn's chest, getting more comfortable. "Hilarious."

Finn's hand is in Poe's hair now, soft scratches at his scalp, little tugs against tangled curls. He's so warm, it shouldn't be possible, but heat radiates out through his clothes, blankets and swaddles Poe, makes him a little dozy.

He's certain he never daydreamed _this_. 

Finn's breath rustles across Poe's forehead. He's right here, separate and distinct, resolutely his own man, and _here_. His thumb presses against the hickey he left on the nape of Poe's neck, and when Poe shivers, he scratches his nail down it.

"Sorry," he whispers, not very sincerely at all.

"Don't stop," Poe tells him as he looks up, at the calligraphy Finn's profile makes against the sky, and then farther up, all the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I adapted Kes's favourite drinking song from one transcribed in ["Soldiers' songs: the folklore of the powerless"](http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/les01.htm), Les Cleveland, 1984.


End file.
